It is important to differentiate sensory property from the material property

doi:10.1016/j.tifs.2019.12.014

Trends in Food Science & Technology

Volume 96, February 2020, Pages 268-270

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2019.12.014 Get rights and content

Highlights

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A sensory property is human perception of its corresponding material property.
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Sensory property and material property are two different properties by nature.
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Stevens' law only indicates a link but not an equivalence between a sensory property and its corresponding physical stimulus.
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A sensory property is not most feasible to be measured in vitro by an instrument.

Abstract

A sensory property (or sensory perception) is human's perception or sensory response to a material stimulus (or stimuli). Despite of the intrinsic relationship between a sensory property and its corresponding material property, the two properties are fundamentally different. However, in sensory practice, the two different properties are very often mixed up and instrumental measured material property is often mistaken as sensory property. Correct differentiation of the two properties is critically important for fundamental understanding of human sensory and in particular for practical sensory analysis. While it is perfectly feasible using an instrument to measure material property, it is much more complicated when using an instrument for sensory perception prediction.

Section snippets

Sensory property is a human-perceived property of a material, but not a material property

Sensory property and material property are two properties fundamentally different. The delicate difference between the two can be demonstrated by their very different mechanisms of detection/sensation and the very different mathematical models used for data analysis. Sensory property is by nature human's physiological as well as psychological responses to external stimuli acting alone or in combination, via channels of vision, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, either independently or

Can a sensory property be instrumentally measured?

While it is perfectly feasible to measure a material property using various physical instruments or devices, it is in principle not feasible (at least with current technology) to instrumentally measure the sensory property of a material. There were many cases in literature reporting sensory perception based on instrumental measurement, in particular in the perception of food texture (Chen & Opara, 2013). Unfortunately, many of such cases mixed up sensory properties perceived by human with the

Derived sensory properties are more complicated

We all know that sensory perception and food preference are much more complicated than just five basic tastes. Instead of being dominated by one single material property, most sensory properties are originated or derived from two or more material stimuli in complicated combination (Chen, 2014). Analysis of derived sensory properties is simply beyond the prediction of Stevens' law. Examples of derived sensory property are extensive. A convenient example is the sweet-sour taste, a very common

Oral sensory perception is not from the food alone, but from the food-saliva mixture

Another very important fact which attracted a lot of attention recently is the critical role of saliva in sensory perception of food flavor and texture. It is now clear that what one perceives during an eating process are not the properties of the food itself but the properties of the mixture of food and saliva (Mosca & Chen, 2017). Saliva is a biofluid with individually varied properties (Neyraud & Morzel, 2019). Extensive studies have confirmed that complicated interactions occur during food

Acknowledgement

The author thanks financial support for this research work from the National Key Research and Development of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant number 1110KZ0117057) and Natural Science Funding Council (grant number 31871885) of China.

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View full text

It is important to differentiate sensory property from the material property

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Sensory property is a human-perceived property of a material, but not a material property

Can a sensory property be instrumentally measured?

Derived sensory properties are more complicated

Oral sensory perception is not from the food alone, but from the food-saliva mixture

Acknowledgement

Journal of Food Engineering

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

Food texture and viscosity: Concept and measurement

“Oral” tribological study on the astringency sensation of red wines

Journal of Texture Studies

Food oral processing: Some important underpinning principles of eating and sensory perception

Food Structure

Salivary alpha-amylase and hormones levels of young adults with different body composition

Journal of Texture Studies

The brain, obesity and addiction: An EEG neuroimaging study

Scientific Reports

Saliva could act as an emulsifier during oral processing of oil/fat

Journal of Texture Studies

Sensation and perception

Observations on Dr. Peleg's comments regarding texture profile analysis

Journal of Texture Studies

An overview of binary taste-taste interactions

Food Quality and Preference