Beth Kimmerle

How does packaging, how does marketing, how does color or storytelling literally change how something tastes?

As researchers, we know that people can rate exact same products higher if the marketing feels more premium.

Hi, Mike.

Thank you for having me.

Oh, great, great question.

In the food and beverage industry, there are folks like me who are practitioners of sensory evaluation, otherwise known as taste experts.

There's...

folks that specialize.

So, there's coffee tasters or chocolate tasters or tea tasters, but we're at the expert level.

So, folks like us have our tongues often insured because of the value they bring to our work.

In my case, I not only have my tongue, but my olfactory bulb insured, much like famous people have body parts insured.

I don't know, Keith Richards' hands, I'm imagining are

insured or Ronaldo's legs.

We assess food products on behalf of the food industry and supply data around taste and texture and aftertaste, aroma, all really, really important things that the food industry, food and beverage industry wants to know.

Yes.

So, for most of us, our taste buds detect five basic tastes, but there's these other elements, these other things that you're referring to that are at play.

So, aroma, memory, even expectation can alter how we perceive taste.

And sometimes it takes over and does much of the work.

So if I were to say to a room full of untrained tasters, hey, describe this chocolate, and they're all tasting the same chocolate, just like you're saying, you know, some may describe a feeling of nostalgia.

and some may focus on how it feels in their mouth and what we call the melt rate, while others might describe taste like, they might detect taste like bitter or sour.