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Flavor Mechanisms and Perceptions: A Review

January, 2020 - January, 2021 A casual review process to design multisensory technology

Flavor is essentially in the brain, but we often overlook this. How exactly do we 'taste' things and decide what to eat?

Flavor Mechanisms

Area of Focus Understanding how we perceive a flavor

Flavors are essentially combined from the human central nervous system. Different sensory modalities are first perceived then are intertwined to produce what is called the flavor. Visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and somatosensory modalities determine what is the flavor and all are interweaved more intensely than one might think.

Food Selection Process

Area of Focus How we choose the food to eat

We tend to eat "what we normally eat". The world is full of standardized food choices, and some people have difficult time choosing an unfamiliar food over what they always eat. Food familiarity has shown to be directly related to food preference; people making the same and standardized food choices could be the reason why we are not yet used to the diverse food choices and advanced food industries' products.

“I'd rather stick to what I already know. There's less chance to fail and I don't want to put something unknown in my mouth.”

Cognitive Approach to Multisensory Technology

Significance Multisensory design guidelines

Multisensory technology has focused on amplifying hedonic properties of an object, create immersive enviornment for virtual scenarios, or simply to replicate the human senses with technology. However, little light has been shed to the actual perceptions of the people toward multisensory technology. My aim is to first analyze what is the basics to how we choose foods, and what are the sensory mechanisms to consider when designing multisenosry experiences.

How flavor is produced

Flavor mechanism

Different parts of the brain, functioning according to the sensory information retrieved, produce sensory perceptions. However, when the sensory modalities are analyzed indepedently, they are only an anlysis, but when 'felt' unanimously, it is a synthesized flavor.

Brain and the Five Senses -

Flavor Perceptions -

1. There is no pure tastant.

2. Nervous system integrates taste, smell, somatosensory inputs.

3. Flavor-flavor learning.

PHYSICAL STIMULI
Appetite Emotions, Preference, Hunger
Food sensations Olfactory, Visual, Auditory
Eating action Salivating, Chewing

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PHYSIOLOGY
Sensory Activation Hearing, Odor, Tactile
Mastication Retronasal Odor, Tasting Mechanisms (TRP channels are expressed in taste buds, nerve fibers, transducing chemical stimuli, giving rise to sensations of taste, irritation, warmth, coolness, and pungency
Swallowing Complete Flavor

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PERCEPTION
Somatosensation Tactile, Thermal, Irritation
All Sensory, Contextual Reflection Taste receptors are located in discrete regions of the mouth but we perceive taste as arising from throughout the oral cavity.
Reference Built

Inclination to Certain Tastes.

Gustatory Perception

Through our past experiences from our ancestors, accumulated experience showed that sweet and fatty meant energy, hence a natural predilection from toddlers to prefer such tastes, while avoid the others which were indicators of poison or toxicity. Taste fiber carries particular taste quality. A theory in 1931 from Arthur Fox said that the phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) tastes can vary among people, meaning, everyone might have different inclination to tastes since birth. Propylthiouracil(PROP) is another substance being used to describe those who can taste them, people who feel more intense tastes, and those cannot. Some can be more sensitive toward the tastes, while some are not - leading to specific eating behaviors, tendencies, nutritional status and balance.

Phenylthiocarbamide

Propylthiouracil

Multi-modal Perception

1. Reason why senses are perceived as one flavor

2. Binding of odors, tastes, tactile qualities into flavors

3. Sweet odors can be used to reduce sugar content

4. Asking users to be analytic

5. Flavors are far more important

Food Selection Process

One way to explicate how a user might choose a food is due to their past experiences and stimulations, also closely related to physicological reactions, but more based on their experiences. This could be the unconscious health-consciousness, social perceptions, product evaluations, or the simply mood of the day. It is vital to address how distinct factors are intertwined before the conduction of food-related programs and experiments; as most rely on what they normally eat, choose the familiar foods, than to venture out. Following is the food choice mechanism theory I have constructed:

Standardized Food Choice

Significance of the Reivew

Summary Flavor mechanism analysis is rudimentary prior to a research related to multisensory integrations, especially related with food. It is seen that the olfactory synthesis with taste, sound, and tactile stimulation is phenomenal in perceiving taste, and it is the tactile stimulation that co-occurs to capture the taste. However, this is often overlooked - most think if we were to provide each corresponding cue, we can replicate the 'flavor' of the food. It is a synthesis, not analysis in that separate provision of senses cannot devise a flavor replication. That is why it has been so difficult to emulate one with technology, and to reproduce digitally needs a more thorough, comprehensive and delicate research approaches.

Research Guidelines

Summary On top of understanding the flavor requirements, one must not neglect the possibility that the current food culture will be transformed to one that 'current flavor network' or the foods that people normally like (lemon cake, orange juice...) may no longer be applicable. Food Neophobia is commonly defined as when one shows extreme aversion towards unfamiliar foods and thus leading to picky and finicky eating habits, which can prolong to adulthood causing nutritional imabalance or obesity. Tackling food neophobia is not only a task for fussy or picky child eaters but could be about preparing for larger groups of people in the future.

Citations

1. Lycan, W. G. (2018). What Does Taste Represent?. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 96(1), 28-37.
2. Small, D. M. (2012). Flavor is in the brain. Physiology & behavior, 107(4), 540-552.
3. Schifferstein, H. N., Fenko, A., Desmet, P. M., Labbe, D., & Martin, N. (2013). Influence of package design on the dynamics of multisensory and emotional food experience. Food Quality and Preference, 27(1), 18-25.
4. Velasco, C., & Spence, C. (Eds.). (2018). Multisensory packaging: Designing new product experiences. Springer.
5. Ahn, Y. Y., Ahnert, S. E., Bagrow, J. P., & Barabási, A. L. (2011). Flavor network and the principles of food pairing. Scientific reports, 1(1), 1-7.
6. Prescott, J. (2015). Multisensory processes in flavour perception and their influence on food choice. Current Opinion in Food Science, 3, 47-52.
7. de Sousa, M. M., Carvalho, F. M., & Pereira, R. G. (2020). Colour and shape of design elements of the packaging labels influence consumer expectations and hedonic judgments of specialty coffee. Food Quality and Preference, 83, 103902.
8. Kumar, S., Higgs, S., Rutters, F., & Humphreys, G. W. (2016). Biased towards food: electrophysiological evidence for biased attention to food stimuli. Brain and cognition, 110, 85-93.
9. Beker, S., Foxe, J. J., & Molholm, S. (2018). Ripe for solution: Delayed development of multisensory processing in autism and its remediation. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 84, 182-192.
10. Shimizu, S., Takahashi, N., & Mori, Y. (2014). TRPs as chemosensors (ROS, RNS, RCS, gasotransmitters). Mammalian transient receptor potential (TRP) cation channels, 767-794.
11. MIT OpenCourseWare 9.35 Sensation And Perception Spring 2009.

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