Sensory tests - How is taste tested?

A piece of liver sausage melts on your tongue - but how does it actually taste? This question is not that easy to answer. Because taste is difficult to put into words. For market research, foods are sensory tested with trained and untrained people.

A trained test group is used like a "human measuring instrument", explains Stiftung Warentest in the December issue of their magazine. In this way it is actually possible to objectively assess the taste of products. Trained test persons have good to above average sensory skills. You can neutrally describe what you smell and taste. It is difficult for the normal consumer to correctly classify the basic tastes sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. Creativity and a good memory are also required. Otherwise, words are quickly lacking when describing sensory perceptions.

As a rule, the testers taste the products anonymously and in random order. Mostly they are trained on certain foods. You have to learn to evaluate analytically rather than on the gut. An example: the sugar content of a chocolate is reduced. Now it is interesting how humans perceive this change. Does the chocolate just taste less sweet or does the malty note come out more strongly? It could also be that the mouthfeel is different.

A consumer test, which is primarily of interest to industry, runs completely differently. The untrained participants should decide spontaneously whether they like a product or not. In this way it can be assessed, for example, whether the target group likes the food and whether a market launch appears promising. For the results to be meaningful, the participants must be familiar with the food. For example, anyone who tastes coffee shouldn't be a tea drinker in everyday life.

Heike Kreutz, www.bzfe.de