Olfaction and taste in the food and beverage industries

Abstract

This chapter addresses how sensory evaluation has become a key element in defining the direction modern industry takes to tailor its products to optimize success in the market place. It provides an overview of how technology and such basic factors as age and gender are becoming important to provide new products focused on specific sectors of the general population. Chemosensory science of olfaction and taste, and the knowledge it produces are essential to the modern food and beverage industries. Understanding the sensory and non‐sensory determinants of consumer behavior involving products is crucial to the economic success of companies within these industries. Brain scanning by PET, fMRI and other methods offer another level of analysis by which insights into human chemosensory perception will, in future, yield useful knowledge for industrial applications.