SSW08: Investigating Flavor Preferences

LAS VEGAS—During Wednesday’s SupplySide West educational sessions, Marcia Levin Pelchat, associate member at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, discussed details related to human flavor and food preferences.

Human preferences for specific tastes and flavors are rooted in genetics—after all, as Levin Pelchat noted during her presentation, we display a preference for sweet tastes while still in the womb. However, she noted that genetics only go so far. “Culture plays a much more important role in defining what people eat,” she said.

Flavor and taste, as detected by the taste buds within our tongues, can also only go so far. Olfaction is the prevailing determinant of flavor. “Aroma is arguably the most-important component of flavor,” said Levin Pelchat. This is a vital detail for formulators developing products that will be specifically marketed to older individuals, since as people age, they begin to lose their capacity for olfactory sensation.

Another interesting point was Levin Pelchat’s point about the beneficial use of combinations of subthreshold flavors. While each subthreshold flavor by itself is undetectable, combinations can produce a synergy—effectively becoming more than the sum of their parts—and emerging as a sensory component in foods.

The session also delved into the difficulty of pinpointing remembered aromas without supporting sensory information (i.e., taste, flavor, visual cue, etc.). Levin Pelchat noted that our limbic “smell brain” develops before we can even speak. In summary, she suggested that “we all have different sensory worlds.”