00:00Have you ever wondered what would it be like to taste food for a living? Well,
00:04that's what these people do. They're called sensory evaluators. You might call
00:08them taste testers, but there's so much more than that.
00:14My name is Gail Vanceville. I am the founder, owner, and president of Sensory
00:20Spectrum, and I have been in the sensory business for over 50 years. You do the math.
00:26Sensory evaluators are trained for over 100 hours. More on that later. They
00:31evaluate the texture, flavor, or fragrance of a product. From toilet paper, to
00:36chocolate, to cheese, they test it all. Why do sensory evaluators do what they do?
00:41Very often our job is to look at prototypes with some ingredients
00:46substituted so that we can tell the product developers, yes, you are safe making
00:52this in the place of your current product and still having the same sensory
00:57properties. There's a whole host of reasons why a product might change, like swapping
01:02out an ingredient for something cheaper or healthier. Take, for instance, Kraft mac and
01:07cheese. Remember when they changed to all natural ingredients? No preservatives or
01:11artificial dyes, but the flavor stayed exactly the same. Boom! Thank your sensory
01:17evaluators. The role of sensory evaluation is to stand next to the product developer
01:24and say, if you have a charge to make a new product, to make an improved product,
01:30to make an ingredient substitution, I am here to tell you whether or not you
01:35succeeded. Were you able to maintain the appearance, the flavor, and the texture of
01:41that product? That is my job. I stand there and say, you know what, this is, this is very, very
01:46close or it's spot on. I think you should move forward with it.
01:50So how would Gail describe cheese? Cheese. There's either sheep, cow or goat dairy. So there's milk and
02:00then there's milk fat. And then there are the fermented notes that are in the milk. So let's take cheddar
02:07cheese,
02:07cheese, which is a cow milk cheese that has milky notes, milk fat notes, nutty notes, skunky notes,
02:16sometimes fecal, or as we like to describe it, the technical term, poop. And it actually belongs
02:26there when you have farmhouse cheddar cheeses from England or Scotland or Wales or some places in Australia.
02:32You will have a fecal note that belongs there. And then you also will have potentially some fruity notes as
02:40well and salty,
02:42sweet, sour, and bitter. And then you have all the textures, which is the hardness and the melt and the
02:47chewiness or
02:48cohesiveness and how fast it disappears in your mouth and whether or not it leaves a fatty film.
02:54To evaluate a new or altered product, they gather a panel. Each panelist is handed a sample. In this case,
03:02pasta sauce.
03:03They'll taste the sauce and evaluate its flavor, texture, and smell. Then they rate each attribute on a scale.
03:10Bitter.
03:11Zero.
03:12Zero.
03:13One.
03:13Zero.
03:14Two.
03:14Zero.
03:16One.
03:16There's an entire book of terms to describe different foods. Gail wrote it.
03:21Grassy. Minerally flinty, if you will. Sweet and sour. Milky notes. Nutty notes. Skunky notes.
03:29How do these panelists identify how salty or sweet something is? During training, they're exposed to different levels of flavor.
03:35A two salt is very mildly salty, while a 20 salt is closer to ocean water. And so on.
03:44Panelists learn these until they're second nature.
03:47The whole idea of being a great panelist is to never think about what you're doing. Just do it. Like
03:55a hockey goalie. Just catch the puck. You're no longer mentally processing.
04:01When I taste, I literally feel like the sample goes into my mouth and then the sample tells me about
04:07itself.
04:08How has this training affected sensory evaluators in their daily lives?
04:12I'm not a normal consumer. I am not normal. I am very picky. If I'm in a restaurant where a
04:17lot of people are wearing fragrance, I will not enjoy it. So it has jaded me or poisoned me or
04:25corrupted me to being really obsessively picky about what I'm eating, where I'm eating, and when I'm eating.
04:34For better or worse, actually tasting what you eat may be a good thing.
04:42Thank you veryap.
04:44Thank you very much.
04:45Thank you very much.
04:45You
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