Taste & its Sensations Experiences that shape the foods that we eat.

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Taste

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= Flavor

Smell comprises 90% of what we taste in foods, without smell, we would only be able to recognize five tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savory.

Taste is a sensory function, in which taste buds found on our tongue receive chemical information. This chemical stimuli is then turned into electrical signals that are sent to the brain. The signals are then interpreted into informa-tion which we use to gain perception.

Flavor is the combined sensory impression of food, and is determined mainly by the chemical sense of taste and smell.

The science of taste experience

Flavor Experience

Bitterness is perceived by many to be un-pleasant. An adverse taste, it helps prevent ingestion of toxic substances.

Saltiness is the taste of salt. Salt suppresses bitterness, and is commonly added to chocolates, fruits, and desserts to inten-sify their sweetness.

Sour is a basic taste that is considered agreeable only in small amounts. An adverse taste, it wards off the ingestion of harmful substances

Sweet An appetitive taste, sweetness rewards the consumption of energy-rich sugars.

Umami is an appetitive taste facilitating ingestion of protein-rich food, and it is variously described as a savory

Chocolate Eating Experience

Flavor: The basic flavors you might experience are bitter and sweet. But do you get any sour notes? Any roasted notes? Is there fruitiness from the acids? Sometimes you’ll get a zing of brightness and citrus. Some flavors come from flaws in the chocolate-making, like smokiness, mustiness, or earthiness; even hamminess, says Kintzer. How does the flavor linger? What is go-ing on in your mouth even well after the chocolate is gone?

Visual: Take your time; inspect the bar. A properly tempered bar is shiny and bright. What’s the color like? Color variations can be extreme, from light to dark. Is it dusty-looking with bloom? Bloom can change the texture of a bar, which affects flavor.

Aroma: Some people rub their fingers over chocolate to warm it up and release the oils that deliver aroma. Remember that as you taste, the aroma will develop. Some tasters will even melt choco-late and eat it with a spoon to get more of the aroma earlier.

Texture: Break a chunk off. A clean snap indicates that the chocolate’s been well tempered. Put it in your mouth. Close your eyes and think about what you’re experiencing. Chew a few times to break it up, and let it melt in your mouth. The rate at which it melts affects how quickly the fla-vors develop. Smack your tongue on the roof of your mouth to get a sense of the texture. Is it creamy, fatty, gritty? How well does it spread out across your palate?

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Ingredient Experience

Chocolate contains more than 350 known compounds, several of which activate three important brain systems that contribute to the experience of pleasure. Sugar, as one ingredient, have a profound and positive impact on our physiology, most notably in the form of a calming effect. Chocolate contains small amounts of theobromine and phenylethlamine, which have the effects of dopmine that provide the familiar “boost” we all experience after eating chocolate. Small amounts of Anandamide is also present in chocolate, which acts similarly to the effects one experiences from THC consumption, or smoking a joint.

It’s easy to understand why chocolate becomes ‘addicting’ based on the ingredients alone. It quenches the pleasure instinct by activating three key brain transmitter systems that are involved in reward. The sucrose in chocolate is just a savvier version of fructrose-a form of sugar that is naturally present in most fruits that were widely available to early hominid hunter-gatherers. -The Pleasure Instinct: Why we crave adventure, chocolate, pheremones, and music

energy to climb a mountain

Desire to eat the whole bar

Extra boost to share love

Chemical Experience

Chocolate also contains phenylethylamine, a chemical related to amphetamines. Like amphetamines, this chemical causes blood pressure and blood-sugar levels to rise, resulting in a feeling of alertness and contentment. Phenylethylamine has been called the "love-drug" because it quickens your pulse, as if you are in love. Caffeine in chocolate may also cause feelings of alertness and a pounding heart. Other stimulants in chocolate include theobro-mine and methylxanthines. These caffeine-relatives are weaker than caffeine-you'd have to eat more than 12 Hershey bars to get as much caffeine as there is in one cup of coffee. All of these stimulants increase the activity of neurotransmitters in the brain.

Reward and interestHunger serves as a motivating factor to get people to motivate people to find food, whether by hunting or gathering or even agri-culture. The reward must be in the pleasurable sensation of eating. Not only will a discriminating sense of taste and smell be useful in helping people choose good food from bad, it will also add greatly to the potential interest level of the food consumed.

bitter

Evolutionary Experience

Hard-wired aversionsFirst, these people are going to encounter unfamiliar foodstuffs. There are certain flavour profiles that indicate danger, such as the smell of rotten or decaying food and the extreme bitter flavor of many poisonous chemicals. Darker chocolates tend to be bitter, but Milka being sweeter and more palatable is not aversive to taste.

Predilections for ‘good’ foodstuffsIn a hunter-gatherer environment where calories are rela-tively scarce, you want people to be drawn to foods with high energy content. The amount of sugar in chocolate translates into a high-energy food, therefore we are biologically pre-determined to seek out chocolate

Learning and memoryIf a potential food item is tried, and makes you sick, then you’ll want to have a strong aversion to that food coupled with good memory and accurate discrimination of its precise smell (preferably you don’t want it to get as far as your mouth) -- or failing that its taste.

The ideas presented here give some sort of bio-logical explanation. The ability of our smell and taste abilities to be trained, the excellent long-term memory we have for tastes and smells, and the reward systems that encourage us to seek out pleasurable taste sensations all must play a part.

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Involuntary memory

“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of Madeleine which on Sunday morn-ings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.”

-From In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust

Sensory experiences recalls memory.

Psychology of Size

We have a culturally enforced 'consumption norm,' which promotes both the tendency to complete eating a unit and the idea that a single unit is the proper amount to eat. The concept of unit bias helps explain how environmental differ-ences in portions and package sizes impact overall consump-tion. The larger tablet for Milka poses an interesting problem based on its larger than average chocolate bar size.

Pleasure Experience

THINK have you ever smelled something or tasted some-thing that reminds you of a memory or a place from your past?

Situational Experiences Our brains make the connection between foods and the situation around that food. Foods enjoyed in good circumstances are ob-viously more highly preferred than foods experienced during negative circumstances. More often than not, when you first started eating chocolate it was centered around an enjoyable time or memory. Whether a holiday baking session, a gift of chocolates for Valentines Day, or a chef sampling his latest concoction, chocolate has intimately been involved in moments of joy, love, and overall happiness.

Gourmand is a person who takes great pleasure in food. The word has different connotations from the similar word gourmet, which emphasizes an individual with a highly refined discerning palate, but in practice the two terms are closely linked, as both imply the enjoyment of good food.

Similarly, a BON VIVEUR is a person who enjoys the good things of life, especially food. The phrase is derived from the French bon vivant, meaning good living, a bon viveur being a “good liver”, or one who lives well.

Food Experience Seekers