Recognizing the taste of food with all body senses
Dining utensils, temperature, color, environment, language, senses, recalling positive memories, etc. can affect the taste of food.
Eating foods with texture, including pomegranate, is a way to reawaken the senses. Researchers say that when choosing and eating food, we rely too much on one or two senses, especially touch and taste.
Researchers at Pollenzo University of Food Sciences in Italy say that people have forgotten to use all their senses when choosing and eating foods. It means that they have “stopped” the use of these senses and their senses have become “lazy”.
They are investigating ways for people to interact with food instead of relying on a single sense, such as sight.
According to Bertarin Hot, quoted by the BBC, according to an article published in the journal “Awareness and Cognition”, color is an important means of providing information about the taste of food, and when we look at food, this is done by giving clues. There are things about the amount of edibleness, the taste of the food and its intensity.
But researchers say that people’s expectations in associating the color with the taste of a food originate from their previous experiences.
Shawna Jason Miller, one of the students of Pollenzo University of Food Sciences, says that the default of consumers is to rely on looking at food, because they are constantly bombarded with color, noise, light and images beyond the sensory boundaries while shopping or at the dining table.
“There are so many different things happening that we no longer pay attention to small details like the texture and smell of food,” he says. However, using our other senses can be difficult.
Some stores do not encourage customers to touch the products and it is very difficult to smell a packaged food.
However, tasting or thinking about the taste of a food should be something that can be done, as many manufacturers allow consumers to try what they want before buying. In any case, taste is relative and is influenced by environmental factors.
Professor Mirco Marconi of the University of Reggio Emilia says that there are currently six types of taste that people can distinguish, which are interpreted as salty, sweet, bitter, sour, meaty (or tasty) and fatty. But maybe scientists can find more flavors.
“We have little knowledge about taste, but our memory shapes how our senses work,” he says.
Surprising the palate with unexpected flavors is a way for people to reconnect with what they eat.
Recently, for a program in Italy, Professor Nicola Prollo’s research team created focaccia bread flavored with a Negroni cocktail, Italian ice cream flavored with mozzarella cheese, tomato and basil extract, and a tiramisu flavored cocktail to investigate this.
According to Jacqueline Blaser, a master’s student in nutrition, a modern menu is made of negative parts of foods, so that there is more room to eat and experiment with foods with unconventional and heterogeneous ingredients.
How to taste all the senses?
“I worked in a few restaurants … we made mozzarella ice cream or peppermint sauce,” he says. A famous example was a burnt almond candy with blue cheese in it. Well, that’s what people don’t expect.”
You may be able to easily identify a food based on its taste, smell, or shape. But can you identify a food or drink based on the sound it makes? Some foods don’t make any sound, but some foods need sound to taste them. Take chips, for example.
Paul Varella and Susanna Fissman write in the book “Kitchen as Laboratory”: “Perceiving the crispiness of a food or food is partly related to the sense of hearing. “All crunchy foods make noise when eaten.”
Some researchers also believe that the sound of a food is related to its taste.
The results of another research published in the journal “Awareness and Cognition” show that the perception of the taste of food should not be defined only by using one sense, but all the senses should be used and coordinate them with the act of eating.
In this research, it is stated that “to describe the combination of taste and smell, the trigeminal nervous system (or the fifth cranial nerve, which is responsible for the sensation in the face and produces movements such as biting, chewing and swallowing) along with the sense of touch, “To which we add visual and auditory cues, they affect our understanding of the food we taste.”
When one of our five senses, like smell, is lost, the rest of the senses must come into play.
In 2010, Dr Carl Philpott set up a smell and taste clinic at the James Paget Gurleston Hospital in Norwich to help people who have lost their sense of smell and suffer from anosmia.
This problem can be caused by chronic sinus disease, after a severe blow to the head, or after a cold, and sufferers may lose their sense of smell to varying degrees.
He says: “80% of what we feel about the taste of food depends on its smell, and 20% is only related to taste.” “Most people say that if you can’t taste it, you can’t smell it,” he adds.
Duncan Book, who loved food, fell from the top of the stairs and hit his head. After this incident, he realized that he could not smell anything anymore.
He has formed a group called “The Fifth Sense” for patients with anosmia.
Duncan, who can still detect some tastes in food, says that losing his sense of smell made him wonder why we have forgotten to use all our senses when eating.
“I want to ask, do we really and fundamentally know what we are eating?” he says.
“Losing the sense of smell forces anosmia sufferers to make a different kind of sensory connection and work harder to make food palatable,” says Dr. Philpott.
Some patients with anosmia choose hot and spicy foods to eat, and others feel that they can no longer enjoy food and suffer from malnutrition.
But how can a person with anosmia improve the cooking and eating experience?
Dr. Philpott suggests that for such a task, start from the preparation of food and except for adding flavor and spices, use the taste of “meat” which is our fifth taste after saltiness, sweetness, sourness and bitterness.
Chopping vegetables can help anosmia patients enjoy cooking again
Duncan Book shows a practical approach; Holding foods and touching and understanding them in cooked and raw state is the key.
He says: “I enjoy this work (cooking) by using contrasts and basic flavors in food. I think one way is the texture of food.”
He explains: “Many times people ask people who are deaf or blind if other senses like smell or hearing help them compensate for the sense they don’t have. In this case, I think that I am more aware of my sense of taste than others.”
“I like to use food to enjoy it,” he adds. Chopping vegetables, even if you don’t taste it, the work of chopping and juicing vegetables is a conscious and enlightening work. “I understand their ingredients and how they affect my body and how to enjoy food.”
But what can other people do to reconnect with food?
“I think a lot of times we’re really in a rush (to eat),” says Shawna Jason Miller. “When you spend more time eating, you can become more aware of your senses, and that’s really important.”
Her colleague Jessica Pearce believes that using all of your senses at the same time is crucial to understanding what you’re actually eating. “Don’t just judge by sight, but touch, listen, smell and taste,” he says.
What is anosmia?
Anosmia (lack of sense of smell) means complete or partial loss of sense of smell.
• Its causes can be head trauma, sinus diseases and respiratory tract infections
• People with anosmia can lose their sense of taste in the long run by losing their sense of smell.
Six flavors
Scientists have so far discovered that humans perceive six types of taste:
• Sweets: Sweet foods indicate the presence of carbohydrates, which are a source of energy
• Salinity: we can determine whether the sodium chloride we eat is necessary for the balance of body water or not
• Bitterness: Many people avoid bitter food, and it is thought that this is to avoid ingesting toxins, which are mostly bitter.
• Pickling: warns the body that there is acid in the food. Spoiled foods can also contain acid. However, the instinctive avoidance of bitter or sour foods can be deliberately ignored, as with coffee or lemon juice.
• Meaty: The fifth taste, which was discovered in 1908, is savory or tasty. The main cause of this taste is glutamate and it indicates that the food contains protein
• Fat: In a study, scientists found out that humans have a receptor for this taste and it was considered as the sixth taste for humans.