taste test

[zabar816]

Hi,

I am in the process of doing a psychological experiment ndard reliable measurement on food for my thesis.

I am specifically interested in taste.

Is there a standard questionaire or form to assess taste. If i have 2 dishes of pasta and one is slightly saltier and i want to see if people think that it taste better how would i go about finding that out. I am curious if there is a standard reliable method.

thanks

[Vadouvan]

Dude, your tax dollars hook you up with so much free stuff it's silly.......

http://nihseniorhealth.gov/problemswithtaste/toc.html

and if that doesnt answer your question.....

E maill Marci Pelchat for advice at.....

http://www.monell.org/faculty_h.htm

scroll down on the left and look for M. Pelchat.

Toodle oo......

[orangeman747]

Herve Thisi's book Molecular Gastronomy just came out translated into English... I just got it, its a great book. It has a LOT of stuff on taste, how to differentiate between taste, etc....

I would highly recommend checking it out for this topic!

[percyn]

Dude, your tax dollars hook you up with so much free stuff it's silly.......

http://nihseniorhealth.gov/problemswithtaste/toc.html

and if that doesnt answer your question.....

E maill Marci Pelchat for advice at.....

http://www.monell.org/faculty_h.htm

scroll down on the left and look for M. Pelchat.

Toodle oo......

←

V, your post make me picture you as a foodie version of that guy on TV wearing a suite covered in question marks, selling a book on government grants

[Torrilin]

Hi,

I am in the process of doing a psychological experiment ndard reliable measurement on food for my thesis.

I am specifically interested in taste.

Is there a standard  questionaire or form  to assess taste. If i have 2 dishes of pasta and one is slightly saltier and i want to see if people think that it taste better how would i go  about finding that out.  I am curious if there is a  standard reliable method.

thanks

←

Just a warning... you probably can't get good blind or double blind test setups on something like a pasta dish. In taste testing food, it's very difficult to get reproducible results, due partially to the difficulty of setting up blind tests, and partially to some poorly understood psychological and physiological factors (for example, sometimes things taste differently to people for psychological reasons... and other times, you can document genetic differences which result in two people tasting different things. I'm pretty sure that's not the only issue tho... and neither side of that issue is particularly well understood.).

To help improve reproducibility, try to make the pasta dishes as visually identical as possible (visual differences between product is one of the most common ways to ruin an otherwise good double blind taste test). There are probably published studies of this type available, so try a literature search to see if there is other methodology advice. Also be aware that you'll get different results from trained testers vs naive testers. Do a literature check on *that* too. Both have their uses, but you need to be aware of the differences for presenting your results. You may need to modify testing methodology if you're using one or the other too. Don't limit your literature searches to psychology journals... make sure to check chemical, medical and food science ones as well.

Emily