TASTE PERCEPTION, FOOD QUALITY AND CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE

Consumer acceptance is a more measurable parameter than the ill defined concept of quality. Thus, it is better to consider how the taste, and indeed all the sensory characteristics, of foods can be manipulated to improve consumer acceptance. If tastes are to be manipulated, it is necessary to understand something about taste mechanisms so that the researcher can avoid the all too common artifacts and biases involved in gustatory measurement. Discussed here are some aspects of sensory information processing in the brain, the problems of crosssensory confusion, sensory adaptation and taste categorization.