Sensory Analysis

Hi, My name is Carol Folk, and I'm here today

to teach about sensory analysis.

You will discuss what sensory analysis is, what it's used

for, the role of your senses, types of testing used

and much more.

We will conclude with demonstrations of different types of sensory

experiments. First, people discuss what sensory analysis is and what

is involved.

So you may be wondering what exactly is sensory analysis?

Sensory analysis is a scientific method that evokes measures, analyzes

and interprets responses to products perceived through the five basic

senses. Some key factors that come into play with sensory

analysis include precision, accuracy and sensitivity.

It is important to reduce the likelihood of false positive

results at all times.

The first step and sensory evaluation is defining the problem.

We ask ourselves, What item are we measuring?

What are we trying to measure and why?

From there, we can determine the best test design.

There are multiple types of testing and variables to keep

in mind, and we will go into detail about these

later. After you've determined your test design.

It's time to figure out the instrumentation necessary to complete

the task.

You would want to ask yourself how many participants do

you need?

Do you need experienced or inexperienced participants?

And is there are certain demographic you're looking for?

Once these key factors have been determined and testing has

been completed, it's time to interpret the results.

You want to draw statistically relevant conclusions that are supported

by the data that you've collected as a result of

tests. Conclusions can be anything such as product acts is

statistically shown to be different from product y, as perceived

by the participants or Product X is distinctly more salty

than product.

Why, which is something that our consumers might not want.

Next we will discuss the rule of the senses and

sensory analysis, as I mentioned previously are five major senses

include smell, sound, sight, touch and taste.

We will discuss each one individually.

The role of smell goes hand in hand with the

sense of taste, which we will see in one of

our demonstrations later on.

Prior to consuming a product, the order of the product

will go directly through your nose, thus providing you with

an initial perception of the flavor to be expected.

However, most people don't realize that you also perceive an

odor after the product has entered your mouth.

The auto travels from your throat up through your nasal

passages. This is why, when you have a stuffy nose,

your sense of taste is limited.

Similar to smell.

One of the first perceptions you have a product will

be due to your sense of sight, so it allows

you to get an initial read of a product's quality.

You can evaluate the color, shape, size, texture, consistency and

opacity, and base your feelings about the product on your

visual perceptions of it.

Your sense of sound has an impact on how you

perceive a product.

You may hear the product sizzle, pop, crackle, crunch, bubble

or drip, and perceive this in a way that impacts

how you feel overall about the product.

Your sense of touch is important because the product, usually

food or drink, will touch your tongue, lips, face or

hands prior to enduring consumption.

Touch is responsible for your perception of texture, whether it's

from a point of contact with your body or with

utensils. Finally, taste is responsible for how we perceive flavor

and mouth feel of a product.

The five major tastes are sweet, salty, sour, bitter and

umami, otherwise known as savory.

The taste receptors or taste buds on your tongue genetically

determined how much of those tastes you will perceive for

a given product.

For example, you may have heard that some people taste

soap when they eat cilantro, whereas others taste a delicious

herb. This is due to genetic differences in our taste

receptors. You may also notice that you enjoy sour products,

whereas somebody you know hates them, which is usually due

to the threshold with which you are impacted by sour

tastes. Personally, I have a high threshold and thus like

for salty, sweet and umami flavors.

But I have a low threshold and thus kind of

a dislike for sour and bitter flavors.

Next, we will touch upon the different types of sensory

testing. It's important to note the differences between the types

of sensory testing because each test is used for a

different purpose.

The three major categories of testing are discriminative, hedonic and

descriptive analysis.

Discriminative testing is used when you are trying to determine

if a difference exists between product samples.

The two tests used for this purpose are primarily the

triangle test and the duo trio test the triangle test

as participants to pick the odd sample out of a

total of three samples, whereas the duo trio has asked

participants to pick the sample.

That is the same as the reference sample.

Another example of discriminative testing?

Asked the question.

Do the samples differ?

In a specific attribute for this purpose, we use paired

comparison ranking or rating difference tests.

Pair comparison asked participants to identify the sample with the

greater amount of the characteristic being measured.

Ranking tests as participants to rank the samples in decreasing

or increasing order of the characteristics being measured.

And finally, the rating difference tests as participants to rank

the perceived amount of the attribute being measured in each

sample, typically from weakest to strongest or vice versa.

Hedonic testing seeks to answer the question.

Is one sample more acceptable than the other?

For this purpose, we use rating, acceptance, preference or ranking

preference tests, rating acceptance tests as participants to rate the

difference and acceptance between two samples paired preference tests as

participants indicate which sample they prefer.

Finally, ranking preference tests asked participants to rank the samples

in order of preference.

The third and final category of sensory testing is descriptive

analysis, which is significantly different from the previous two we

discussed for the previous two categories.

They do not require a trained panel of participants, and

typically they rely on a large number of participants anywhere

from 50 to over 100 participants that have little to

no training.

However, descriptive analysis testing uses a trained panel of limited

participants, usually between 10 and 20 but sometimes even less

than that descriptive analysis is used to answer the question.

How do products differ in specific sensory attributes?

The panel of participants is picked, and then they are

provided with multiple training sessions to calibrate their palates to

agree on selective scoring.

This type of testing is typically used for flavor or

texture. Profiling and Panelists are asked to rank multiple samples

on a variety of attributes.

I myself was lucky enough to participate in a panel

like this where we were required to taste multiple cold

brew coffee samples and we had to calibrate our palates

to agree on attributes such as coffee notes, chocolate notes,

smoked notes, bitterness, earthiness, astringency, etcetera.

Now that we've discussed the types of testing involved, it's

important to discuss the types of scales used in testing

and important variables to consider in your experimental design.

First, we will discuss the scales used, and then we

will talk about the variables to consider.

The following are the three most common scales used category

line and magnitude estimation.

Category scales measure increasing intensity for sensation such as degrees

of liking or preference.

Find scales utilized graphic ratings or visual analogue scales to

measure levels of attributes.

If you've ever been to a hospital or the doctor

and you were asked to rate your pain using a

scale of smiley faces, too sad faces.

This is actually an example of a line scale.

The last type of scale was a magnitude estimation scale,

which is used to show how strong our weakest sensation

is. Sometimes a reference stimulus is used for this type

of scale, regardless of the type of testing picked.

Panel management is a key factor in the success of

a sensory test.

Some criteria for Panelists needs to be determined prior to

selection, such as age group, how much they use or

don't use the products gender, etcetera.

In some cases, panels will need to be prepped by

giving them instructions, training or scoring sheets.

In some instances, timing is a key factor.

For example, if you're testing coffee samples and your demographic

are those who drink coffee in the morning, you may

want to schedule your testing to occur during the morning

hours. In addition, some sensory panels are given incentives to

participate in panels such as monetary or gift card incentives,

where the ability to take free product home with them.

However, the most common incentive tends to be monetary.

Second environment plays a crucial role in the success of

sensory panels.

You may not think about this, but the temperature, humidity

and air circulation in the panel room needs to be

consistent. Otherwise your Panelists could become biased.

For example, if your panel room is too cold or

too hot, your Panelists will be inclined to rush through

the test to getting more get to a more comfortable

environment, thus skewing your results.

Two additional key factors are color and lighting in the

room. In some cases, researchers will make the lighting in

the room a specific color to evoke through emotions from

their Panelists that play into consumption of the product being

tested. Other times, the lighting is dimmed or made a

specific color to make it difficult to tell any difference

in color between the samples.

The overall goal is to reduce any potential for bias

among your Panelists.

Last and most importantly, the product being tested is subject

to a number of variables that could impact how your

Panelists perceive it.

When preparing samples, you want to make sure they are

the same size, shape and temperature.

Also, you want to ensure that they are presented to

Panelists in a way that won't buys them, such as

entrees with sheets that show even circles for each sample

and with three digit blinded codes that are not numbers

that are known to people such as 911 and 666

In some cases, you may need to consider a carrier

for your products, such as a sauce on bread or

pasta. If you're testing multiple samples in a short amount

of time, you may want to consider palate cleansers such

as unsalted crackers and a cup of water to provide

to your participants to use between samples.

They will also usually be asked to wait a certain

number of seconds or minutes between cleansing their palate and

tasting their next sample.

And finally, now we will show some sensory experiments that

I've completed to showcase some of the concepts from this

presentation. The first experiment involves four samples of different colors.

Sodas. The goal is for the participant to taste each

sample and try to guess what each flavor is.

We're looking to see if they can tell a difference

between each sample.

I will provide the videos of the experiment separately, since

they seem to be having an issue showing in the

presentation. But after you've watched the video, you will see

that even though the participant thought that each sample of

soda was a different flavor, the reality is they were

actually all the same flavor.

They were just samples of ginger ale with food coloring.

The participants brain was tricked into believing each sample was

a different flavor, based on the color of each sample.

The impact of visuals have on sensory analysis is a

key component to the overall success of the experiment.

This is why one of the variables we discussed prior

deals with the environment in which you test this includes

samples being prepared the same way being presented as looking

identical in terms of portion size and container.

In the second experiment, the participant was given a sample

of chocolate.

A timer was set for one minute, and the participant

was asked to identify the time at which they felt

the flavor of the chocolate was the most intense police

symptoms. And if they noticed a drop off in flavor.

We call this a time intensity test.

Once you've watched the video, you will see that the

participant, as I mentioned earlier, was only given a minute

timer. And after this minute timer, he actually mentioned to

me not on the video that the flavor kept intensifying

past the one minute mark.

He felt that the flavor was the least intense at

the beginning of the timer, most intense about a minute

and 15 in, and that the flavor drops off closer

to what would have been the two minute mark.

This experiment also serves as an example that sometimes we

don't always get the experimental design right, and sometimes it

requires alteration to better suit the needs of the experiment.

Thank you for taking the time to view and listen

to my presentation today.

I hope that you have learned more about sensory analysis

and its uses, and that you enjoyed the experiments and

might even consider tricking your friends and family in a

similar way.

Sensory Analysis

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