This year’s Food Summit, The Taste of Sense, was held on 19 to 21 November and focused on the interactions between food and the human senses. Some 40 scientists discussed the multi-sensory integration of taste triggers. What is different in and between, for example, children or/and the elderly, and to what extent should food manufacturers take this into account in developing products.
The three perspectives were introduced and discussed: Mechanisms of Tasting, including neurophysiological, receptor level and cross-modal mechanisms by Prof. Edmund Rolls (Oxford, UK); the Physiological State, including hunger and satiety, hormonal state and stress by Prof. Tom Scott (San Diego, USA); and Making Taste, how to engineer the timing of tastants and congruencies and incongruencies by Prof. David Weitz (Harvard, USA).
Initial conclusions and recommendations
Preliminary conclusions were reached on how to increase and accelerate progress in this field of research. Our experience of taste depends on the signals we sense chemically, their integration (stronger if tastants are congruent and weaker when incongruent), attention and experience. The relative importance of these factors can change dramatically, depending on our physiological state. This effect should be taken into account in developing foods for specific age groups.
Understanding the intricate combination of chemical sensing and neural processing is key to understanding how we can learn to like foods. Thus, more attention should be given to integrated and more realistic studies with better stimulus control. Such studies will combine neurophysiology with food design and food intake studies and require close collaboration with food technologists. Finally, more emphasis should be given to the role of physiological state; learning; individual differences; somato-sensory signals and oral processing; the gastrointestinal tract and feedback mechanisms to the brain.