The Science of Food

Sound is the forgotten flavor sense

Manipulating sound can transform our experience of food and drink, making stale potato chips taste fresh, adding the sensation of cream to black coffee, or boosting the savory, peaty notes in whiskey. Composers have written music to go with feasts and banquets since antiquity—indeed, in at a particularly spectacular dinner hosted by Duke Philip of Burgundy in 1454, twenty-eight musicians were hidden inside an immense pie, beginning to play as the crust was opened. Today, however, most chefs and restaurants fail to consider the sonic aspects of eating and drinking. [MORE]

Sugar substitutes not so super sweet after all

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. --The taste of common sugar substitutes is often described as being much more intense than sugar, but participants in a recent study indicated that these non-nutritive sugar substitutes are no sweeter than the real thing, according to Penn State food scientists.

In the study, participants compared the taste of non-nutritive sweeteners that are often used as low- or no-calorie sugar substitutes with those of nutritive sweeteners, such as sugar, maple syrup and agave nectar. The participants indicated they could perceive the non-nutritive sweeteners -- such as aspartame, marketed as NutraSweet; acesulfameK, often called AceK; and RebA, a compound found in the stevia plant -- at lower concentrations than real sugar, but the intensity of these sensations was no sweeter than sugar and other nutritive sweeteners.

"While you can detect non-nutritive sweeteners at lower levels than sugar, that doesn't really tell us anything about the perceived intensity of that sweetness," said John Hayes, assistant professor, food science and director of the Sensory Evaluation Center.[MORE]

Food Scientists Work to Block Bitter Food Tastes

Food scientists are working to block, mask and/or distract from bitter tastes in foods to make them more palatable to consumers, many of whom are genetically sensitive to bitter tastes, according to a new presentation at the 2014 Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting & Food Expo® in New Orleans.

"Many factors go into why we eat what we do," said John Hayes, PhD, assistant professor of food science and director of the Sensory Evaluation Center at Pennsylvania State University, with taste consistently ranking as number one. There's also "a huge variability in how much bitterness people taste. If something is bitter you like it less and you eat it less." [MORE]

Sriracha Chemistry: How Hot Sauces Perk Up Your Food And Your Mood

From NPR's The Salt - What's on Your Plate
February 24, 2014

Anyone who has ever drizzled, doused or — heck — drenched their food with Sriracha knows the hot sauce can make almost any dish taste better. But could these spicy condiments also make us a little happier? [MORE]

Why do we love snack food?

Penn State food science experts study why we love chips, chocolate and other famous Pennsylvania foods, and offer expertise to the state’s snack food industry.

Although the Steelers and Eagles didn’t make it to the Super Bowl this year, Pennsylvania and Penn State will still be represented on game day — on your plate. And more likely than not, Penn State experts have had a hand in developing, or evolving, many of the Keystone State’s famous finger foods.

While Nittany Lion alumni will represent Penn State Feb. 2 at MetLife Stadium, Pennsylvania food industries’ wares will be served at Super Bowl parties nationwide. Companies from around the commonwealth — referred to as the snack food belt — supply many of the Sunday afternoon munchies enjoyed while calling plays from the couch.

If your potato chips are from Utz, Middleswarth, Martin’s, Snyder’s of Hanover or Snyder of Berlin — just to name a few — the snack came from some region of Pennsylvania. [MORE]

The psychology of hating food (and how we learn to love it)

Kids who hate stinky cheese and greens often grow into adults who can't get enough of them. Why do our tastes seem to transform in our teens? And can we change our tastes deliberately as adults? Here's what scientists know so far about innate preferences, learned preferences, and lessons from taste psychology.  [MORE]

“Modern chicken has no flavor” — let’s make it in a lab

Of the roughly five thousand additives allowed into food, over half are flavorings. These thousands of taste molecules serve not only as window-dressing designed to make food hyperappealing, but often as the very foundation of the house itself. Consider KFC’s gravy, a product with at least seven flavoring ingredients, or nearly a third of the total:

Food Starch-Modified, Maltodextrin, Enriched Wheat Flour (Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Chicken Fat, Wheat Flour, Salt, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Monosodium Glutamate, Dextrose, Palm and Canola Oils, Mono- and Diglycerides, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Natural and Artificial Flavor (with Hydrolyzed Corn Protein, Milk), Caramel Color (Treated with Sulfiting Agents), Onion Powder, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate, Spice, Spice Extractives, with Not More Than 2% Silicon Dioxide Added as an Anticaking Agent.... [More]

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

The growing attention Americans are paying to what they put into their mouths has touched off a new scramble by the processed-food companies to address health concerns. Pressed by the Obama administration and consumers, Kraft, Nestlé, Pepsi, Campbell and General Mills, among others, have begun to trim the loads of salt, sugar and fat in many products. And with consumer advocates pushing for more government intervention, Coca-Cola made headlines in January by releasing ads that promoted its bottled water and low-calorie drinks as a way to counter obesity.[MORE]

Bitter tastes quickly turn milk chocolate fans sour

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Dark chocolate lovers can handle a wider range of bitter tastes before rejection compared to milk chocolate fans, according to Penn State food scientists. In a test of bitterness rejection levels in chocolate, people who prefer milk chocolate quickly detected -- and disliked -- milk chocolate with a bitter substance added to the candy, according to Meriel Harwood, a graduate student in food science. Dark chocolate fans had significantly higher tolerance to the added bitterness than people who like milk chocolate. In some cases, you may be able to detect a change in the taste of your food, but that might not necessarily lead to disliking the product," said Harwood. "However, almost immediately, people who preferred milk chocolate indicated they tasted something different and they didn't like it." [MORE]

Read about cocoa, chocolate, and confectionery research at Penn State Food Science here!

Dollars and Scents: The Chemistry of a Delicious Tomato

The typical supermarket tomato: ripe red, firm to the touch, free of blemishes—and of flavor. Since at least the 1970s, U.S. consumers have lamented the beautiful but bland fruits that farmers breed not for taste, but rather for high yield and durability during shipping. Recently, organic farmers and foodies have championed the superior flavors of heirloom tomatoes—older varieties that come in an assortment of shapes, sizes and colors. In a new study, researchers took a close look at the chemical composition of both standard tomatoes and hundreds of different heirloom varieties, which they also fed to 170 volunteers in a taste test. Their new findings confirm what scientists have learned in recent years: a tomato's flavor depends not only on the balance of sugars and acids within the fruit, but also on subtle aromatic compounds—many of which are lacking in the modern supermarket tomato. [MORE]

For more on good and bad taste perceptions some have of tomatoes and other culinary vegetables, read Taster’s Choice: Why I Hate Raw Tomatoes and You Don’t.