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<pubDate>Fri, 6 Jul 2012 17:00:00 PDT</pubDate>
<title>DailyDirt: No Accounting For Taste?</title>
<dc:creator>Michael Ho</dc:creator>
<link>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100304/0432398415/dailydirt-no-accounting-taste.shtml</link>
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<description><![CDATA[ Quantifying how our taste buds react to different ingredients isn't an easy task. It's hard enough to get 4 out of 5 dentists to agree on a toothpaste, so it's understandably difficult to get untrained taste testers to agree on what kind of flavors they prefer. The assumption that there is a single "best-tasting" formula for a particular food is unrealistic in many cases, anyway, as Malcolm Gladwell's popular <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html">TED talk on spaghetti sauces</a> discusses. Still, food science has to take some kind of measurements, and here are just a few examples. 

<ul>

<li> <a title="http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/11/coffee-tasting-how-to-develop-your-palate-cupping-training-to-taste-better.html" href="http://bit.ly/MpCdD8">If you want to hone your tasting skills, you have to practice, practice, practice.</a> And maybe buy a bushel of different apples and try to describe each variety in as much detail as possible.... [<a href="http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/11/coffee-tasting-how-to-develop-your-palate-cupping-training-to-taste-better.html">url</a>]</li>

<li> <a title="http://www.nature.com/srep/2011/111215/srep00196/full/srep00196.html" href="http://bit.ly/KjRL7G">A fascinating study of Asian and Western food recipes shows that Western dishes tend to pair ingredients with similar flavors, whereas Asian recipes don't.</a> So the "sweet and sour" sauce is only on an Asian menu, but this study goes into far more depth than that. (And there's a <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/nature_taste/marketing/index.html">free article</a> on taste, sponsored by Ajinomoto.) [<a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2011/111215/srep00196/full/srep00196.html">url</a>]</li>

<li> <a title="http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/feb/16/chile-experts-trinidad-moruga-scorpion-hottest/ " href="http://bit.ly/L3yNlj">The hottest pepper on the planet goes to the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion with an average Scoville Heat Unit value of 1.2 million.</a> Some individual peppers from this plant have hit 2 million Scoville heat units, and this research will allow hot sauce companies to scientifically claim to use the hottest known peppers. [<a href="http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/feb/16/chile-experts-trinidad-moruga-scorpion-hottest/ ">url</a>]</li>

</ul> 

If you have some more free time, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) <a title="http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/stumble/stumblethru:www.techdirt.com" href="http://bit.ly/fagV8c">Techdirt post</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100304/0432398415/dailydirt-no-accounting-taste.shtml">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100304/0432398415/dailydirt-no-accounting-taste.shtml#comments">Comments</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100304/0432398415/dailydirt-no-accounting-taste.shtml?op=sharethis">Email This Story</a><br />
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