a course on sensing food

For two days, Lenie and I attended a short course on sensory evaluation. It's a course offered by the Institute of Food Science and Technology at the University of the Philippines Los Banos. Dr Linda Mabesa and Dr Wilson Tan were the resource persons during the course with Wilson taking over much of the lecture and the discussion. We were also supervised by Rona, an instructor in the institute, and Mang Emong, the guy who worked a lot behind the scenes to prepare the samples we would be munching on.

I'm back in school... for two days only

I liked how the course had been structured. We had a few hours of introduction; Wilson attempted to squeeze in what Food Tech majors study in five months into two hours of lecture. It was a very typical first meeting; however, what made it more interesting was getting to know our classmates during this short course. We, it turned out, were a motley crew of people from various food industries: cereals, organic vegetables, snack foods, bottled beverages, meat products, and seaweed by-products. 

After the lecture, we started learning sensory evaluation the hands-on way. First, we were taught what a sensory evaluation area should look like. In the Institute of Food Science and Technology, five booths are set up with a sliding window each where samples are conveyed from the prep room to the evaluator. The booths are well lit with light bulbs and are colored in neutral tones. Atop the sliding windows, there are light switches; these switches are connected to light bulbs on the "kitchen" side of the lab. These light bulbs are turned on when the evaluator is ready for the samples and when he/she has finished with the sensory test. 

the do-not-disturb-while-eating/drinking zone

While the evaluators take their seats, the samples are placed in the right containers (which have been previously randomized and laid out on a table matrix). These containers are then arranged in small trays in which they are presented to the evaluator. A cup of water is also provided to act as a rinse in between samples.

During our course, we compared several samples of flavor compounds, several types of beverages, and several brands of fruit product.

flavor compounds in water

We were also taught different approaches to tackle the sensory evaluation challenge. There are a lot of different kinds of sensory tests. It is up to the test organizer to choose which of these myriad of tests to use and match them to the appropriate statistical analysis approach.

preparing the samples for evaluation

Is it important to have a low threshold for flavors or a high sensitivity to differing textural attributes to pass the regular food science course on sensory evaluation?

Surprisingly, Wilson said that being a good sensory evaluator is not the biggest factor for passing the course; instead, how one interprets the data is even more important than getting the correct answers each time during the evaluations all semester long.

orange juice for taste testing

After tasting all the goodies in the lab, it was time to crunch the numbers. Yes, we learned (or relearned) how to conduct analyses of variance (ANOVA) using normal calculators (or scientific calculators, at best); no statistical software, not even a computer, in the room where we did the computations. 

Two days of honing my senses AND my statistics skills. I've got to agree that what was given to us in the short course was just the tip of the sensory science iceberg. I fully intend to apply what we've learned in class on my samples back in my lab.