TITLE OF ARTICLE: Educated Taste

              AUTHOR: Mullen, Nancy
              JOURNAL NAME: The Christian Science Monitor
              DATE: April 27, 1988
              PAGE(S) 16-17
              ACCESSION NUMBER: 06
              SENSE(S): *Taste; Sight

              ABSTRACT: Focuses on the methods that Consumer
              Union's "Consumer Reports" employs to test 12 food
              products a year. Individual non-professional taste
              testers are chosen from a variety of backgrounds.

              These testers first "train" their sense of taste.
              Taste and texture scales by means of sweet, sour,
              salty and bitter solutions were used to test foods.
              <LK107 TASTE> A panel of food testers may spend
              four or five hours sampling various foods which
              appear in unlabeled containers. Team members come
              up with their impressions and perceptions, brain
              storming at length. <LK159 FOOD PREFERENCE EFFECTS>


              When they are ready to rate products, each panelist
              goes into a soundproof booth with red lights to
              eliminate biases to food due to color perceptions.
              In the individual booths, panelists are served four
              samples per sitting twice a day. Variables are
              controlled by a strict sampling procedure. Usually
              products are tasted four times by seven people.
              This enables a product to be sampled 28 times.

              All the panelists' ratings of the product are
              totalled by a statistician, who comes up with an
              average which serves as the sensory profile of the
              food product.

RESEARCHERS QUOTED IN ARTICLE: None

