Abstract Food cultures differ among countries and regions. Yokan, a traditional Japanese confection, is culturally familiar to Japanese people but unfamiliar to Westerners. We investigated the effect of cultural differences and retronasal... more
Abstract Food cultures differ among countries and regions. Yokan, a traditional Japanese confection, is culturally familiar to Japanese people but unfamiliar to Westerners. We investigated the effect of cultural differences and retronasal aroma on flavor preference for and taste perception of yokan among Japanese and German participants. As a control food, we also used the marshmallow, which is culturally familiar to both Japanese and German participants. Participants evaluated their preference for flavor as well as the intensity of the five basic taste qualities and retronasal aroma under the nostril-open and nostril-closed conditions. The retronasal aroma of a culturally familiar food significantly increased preference for flavor, whereas the retronasal aroma of a culturally unfamiliar food did not affect preference for flavor. Moreover, for all taste qualities, retronasal aroma induced a similar magnitude of taste enhancement between culturally familiar and unfamiliar foods, suggesting that cultural familiarity with a food does not affect taste perception. However, the retronasal aroma induced significantly greater umami enhancement in Japanese participants than in German participants, suggesting an effect of cultural familiarity with specific taste qualities on taste perception. These findings indicate that cultural differences and retronasal aroma affect flavor preference for and umami perception of food.
Research Interests: Marketing, Psychology, Perception, Taste, Aroma, and 4 moreFlavor, Food Sciences, Preference, and Umami
Interaction between odor and taste information creates flavor perception. There are many possible determinants of the interaction between odor and taste, one of which may be the somatic sensations associated with breathing. We assumed... more
Interaction between odor and taste information creates flavor perception. There are many possible determinants of the interaction between odor and taste, one of which may be the somatic sensations associated with breathing. We assumed that a smell stimulus accompanied by inhaling or exhaling enhances taste intensity if the order is congruent with natural drinking. To present an olfactory stimulus from the identical location during inhalation and exhalation, we blocked the gap between the tube presenting the olfactory stimulus and the nostril. Participants breathed and ingested the solution according to the instructions on the screen and evaluated the solution’s taste intensity. Vanilla odor enhanced the sweet taste in both retronasal and orthonasal conditions when the order of stimuli was congruent with natural drinking, but it did not do so in either condition when they were incongruent. The results suggest that breathing is a determinant of odor–taste interaction. The methods of p...
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In most cases, a meal cannot be finished with a single bite and sip. During eating and drinking, consumers receive dynamic food perceptions from sensory attributes in foods. Thus, we performed multi-sip time–intensity (TI) evaluation of... more
In most cases, a meal cannot be finished with a single bite and sip. During eating and drinking, consumers receive dynamic food perceptions from sensory attributes in foods. Thus, we performed multi-sip time–intensity (TI) evaluation of sensory attribute. In each of ten trials, the participant evaluated continuously the intensity of retronasal aroma for 60 s after swallowing oolong tea. We compared the TI parameters (Imax: maximum intensity, Tmax: time point at which intensity reached the maximum value, AUC: area under the TI curve, Dplateau: duration between the first and last time points with values exceeding 90% of the maximum intensity, Rinc: rate of intensity increase between the first time points with values exceeding 5% and 90% of the maximum intensity, and Rdec: rate of intensity decrease between the last time points with values exceeding 5% and 90% of the maximum intensity) and TI curves among the ten trials, and approximated each TI curve with an exponential model. Some TI...
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There are several studies showing the hedonics of odor affects human brain responses.In preceding studies,however,the hedonics of odor was decided by experimenters'settings,not by participants'own ratings.This might be one reason... more
There are several studies showing the hedonics of odor affects human brain responses.In preceding studies,however,the hedonics of odor was decided by experimenters'settings,not by participants'own ratings.This might be one reason of disagreement of activated brain areas among preceding studies.Thus, in this study,the odor stimulations were grouped into one of three conditions,pleasant,neutral and unpleasant conditions,based on participants'own ratings,and then brain responses revealed by fMRI were analyzed and compared based on these conditions.Activation was clearly detected in the insula and the cingulate cortex during odor stimulations that participants evaluated as unpleasant,and in the cingulate cortex during odor stimulation that the participants evaluated as pleasant.It is suggested that the inconsist ency of activated brain areas in previous studies may have been caused by individual differences in the evaluation of odor hedonics. Introduction Many studies have r...
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Research Interests: ODOR and Olfactometer
IntroductionWhen participants eat foods, they direct their attention to the particular taste quality that is the target of evaluation and subsequently perceive the intensity of the attended taste quality. We defined the ease with which... more
IntroductionWhen participants eat foods, they direct their attention to the particular taste quality that is the target of evaluation and subsequently perceive the intensity of the attended taste quality. We defined the ease with which participants pay attention to a particular taste quality as the “noticeability” of that quality. In our previous study, Japanese participants evaluated noticeability and intensity of five fundamental taste qualities (sweetness, umami, saltiness, sourness, and bitterness) under open- and closed-nostril conditions, using a popular traditional Japanese confection, yokan. The correlation between noticeability and intensity of sweetness was significantly reduced when participants were tested with open nostrils. Therefore, we hypothesized that high familiarity with a food and its olfactory information is necessary to decrease the correlation between these two scales.MethodsIn order to verify this hypothesis, we asked Japanese and German participants, who have different food cultures, to subjectively evaluate yokan, which is familiar to Japanese but unfamiliar to Germans. In a control condition, marshmallows were used which are familiar to all participants. Participants consumed each food under open- and closed-nostril conditions and evaluated the noticeability and intensity of the five fundamental taste qualities.ResultsThere were significant differences between the participants’ groups as the correlation between noticeability and intensity was reduced significantly only for sweetness of a familiar food under open-nostril condition.ConclusionsThese results support our hypothesis that high familiarity with a food and its olfactory information might be necessary to decrease the correlation between noticeability and intensity of a particular taste quality.ImplicationsThis finding suggests that perception of a food is influenced by its familiarity and retronasal aroma. These results suggest when a food is unfamiliar, the noticeability and intensity of a particular taste quality are not much altered by the retronasal aroma, but when a food is highly familiar, retronasal aroma serves to decouple noticeability and intensity of a given taste quality.
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Non-invasive methods to measure brain function, particularly the methods of magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have improved rapidly and remarkably. With these methods, researchers have measured... more
Non-invasive methods to measure brain function, particularly the methods of magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have improved rapidly and remarkably. With these methods, researchers have measured higher cortical functions of the living human brain, especially visual and auditory functions. MEG has the special advantage that it can trace the movement of cortical activity.
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Background Common foods consist of several taste qualities. Consumers perceive intensity of a particular taste quality after noticing it among other taste qualities when they eat common foods. We supposed that while one is eating the... more
Background Common foods consist of several taste qualities. Consumers perceive intensity of a particular taste quality after noticing it among other taste qualities when they eat common foods. We supposed that while one is eating the facility for noticing a taste quality present in a common food will differ among taste qualities which compose the common food. We, therefore, proposed a new measurement scale for food perception named ‘noticeability’. Furthermore, we found that consumers’ food perceptions to common foods were modified by retronasal aroma. In this study, in order to examine whether retronasal aroma affects the relationship between noticeability and perceived intensity for taste, we evaluated participants for noticeability and perceived intensity of five fundamental taste qualities (sweetness, saltiness, sourness, bitterness, and umami) under open and closed nostril conditions using one of the most popular traditional Japanese confections called ‘yokan’. Results The tast...
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It seems that interaction between olfaction (smell sensation) and gustation (taste sensation) will stronger than other interactions among five senses, although no one has ever confirmed psychophysically. In this study, we utilized... more
It seems that interaction between olfaction (smell sensation) and gustation (taste sensation) will stronger than other interactions among five senses, although no one has ever confirmed psychophysically. In this study, we utilized synchrony perception task to confirm this specificity comparing control condition, interaction between vision and olfaction and one between vision and gustation. We used NaCl as taste stimuli and flavor from bubbling chicken stock as olfactory stimuli. We used taste stimulator which was able to present pure gustation without tactile stimuli, and smell stimulator with original developed real time stimulus monitoring. We used LED for vision stimuli. Timing of both stimuli was shifted from −1000 ms to +1000ms with each other, and participants were instructed to judge synchronicity. Control conditions revealed that olfaction and gustation has almost equivalent temporal resolution to other sensations. And probability distribution between olfaction and gustation was quite different from other interactions including vision. These results shows interaction between olfaction and gustation is more specific.
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ABSTRACT Consumers’ dietary habits affect perception of flavor attributes of common foods. One such flavor attribute is aftertaste, but the definition of this term in the context of flavor perception is not consistent among studies. To... more
ABSTRACT Consumers’ dietary habits affect perception of flavor attributes of common foods. One such flavor attribute is aftertaste, but the definition of this term in the context of flavor perception is not consistent among studies. To address this issue, we refer collectively to the complex sensation perceived after swallowing or spitting out foods as “after-flavor”, and considered each flavor attribute (for example, bitterness and retronasal aroma) as a component of after-flavor. In this study, we examined how consumption of canned coffee beverages in daily life affects sensitivity to the after-flavor of these beverages. We performed time-intensity evaluation of bitterness and retronasal aroma after participants swallowed three different canned coffee beverages. We classified participants into two groups based on their consumption of canned coffee beverages in daily life: the relatively high-consumption group, who consumed at least one canned coffee beverages of per a week, and the relatively low-consumption group, who consumed less than one canned coffee beverages per week. We compared the time courses of perceived intensity of bitterness and retronasal aroma between these two groups.