Taste Expert Answers Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

i'm beth kimberly i'm an author and taste expert today i'm answering your questions from twitter welcome to taste support [Music] first up all out of coffee asks can someone please explain to me the difference between tart and sour tastes here's something for you they're the same but in the professional tasting industry we use the term sour but we don't just use sour we use the terms lactic sour basic sour or acetic sour acetic sour is the type of sour that you're getting from things like vinegar lactic sour is the type of sour that you're getting from things like buttermilk or yogurt and basic sour that is the sour of citric acid or something citrus on your mouth this is from eileen terrell and she's asking could someone please explain to me the science of why blue raspberry is by far the best fruit flavor even though blue raspberry isn't even real so in the food industry a flavor house is where product developers and food scientists go to source flavors sometimes they go to a flavor house and say hey i want an orange but i it to be more of a mandarin orange and it needs to be cooked and i'd like at this level of sweet and this level of sour sometimes the flavor house has a library of flavors that you can choose from so blue raspberry might have been one of those wacky flavors that the flavor house developed or came from the mind of a scientist if you try blue raspberry i'm not sure about this but i almost wonder if somebody took raspberry and combine it with grape all right so we have a question from beyonce does anyone have remedies for bringing taste and smell back to a hundred percent after covid crying face it's been almost a year and i'm still suffering one of the things that you can do is practice you can get yourself some essential oils in a range of different flavors and what you're going to do is just pass them under your nose just take little bunny sniffs not too much and then you're going to tell yourself okay that's lemongrass what's going to happen is slowly but surely you're going to trigger your memory and your brain to sort of remember what that was here's the thing it will come back a lot of people have had sort of phantom smells or weird smells as a result of of covid but we're now seeing that that in time goes away and you can train yourself to come back a little bit faster all right we've got a question from roshibi i ate so much sour candy that my tongue is raw and it hurts now i love sour candy so much why did it have to betray me like this i feel your pain but on the outside of sour candy is something called citric acid and it's those little crystals when you have something sour that get into your literally papillae your tongue right it can eat away at the roof of your mouth it can eat away your tongue so whatever sour candy you're eating it might be a little extreme all right next question and this is from super 70s sports i don't know what shackleberry finn is but one thing i know it is definitely not a flavor and super 70s sports is also including a picture of oh my gosh it's like a classic kool-aid pack with the pitcher guy writing a shark at the top it says charcoal berry finn it also says it's pink okay so we're getting some clues here what flavor would this be it is not a flavor but this is a way for food companies to own a flavor because i see charcoal berry fin tm and it looks like this was produced i don't know in the 80s or something and so they probably didn't get the memo that shark fin is illegal number one number two i think you do want to cue your customers into what flavor this is but it's got this wild like devil may care packaging i think it's like come into this crazy shark world with us it is not a flavor but it is a way for a food company to kind of own a concept right because the three top flavors chocolate vanilla and strawberry are kind of out there already i don't know what sharkleberry finn is but one thing i know it's definitely not a flavor this is from doing it to them this is great i want chicken nuggets so bad ops is all in caps so bad dude why is mcdonald's so good but also so terrible why are they so addicting they're so addicting because they have been formulated in a lab this is chicken that's been combined with potato and other ingredients so it can be formed and molded and then breaded and fried what the lab has done is to try to modulate the taste so that it's just the right perfect amount of sweet and salty and sour and bitter and umami right so those are the five basic tastes when you can combine them in just the right way foods are addicting like they can nail it and that's why chicken nuggets oh my gosh just the smell makes people cave and they go for them we have a question from gripe gal explain to me how with all the science in the world the taste of gum only lasts five minutes yet the taste of onion lasts 864 hours this gum has a coloring system a flavoring system and what's called gum base and what happens when you masticate or chew product is that you're moving through the sweetener system and it's basically going into your stomach right so as you move through this it tastes great some of the sweetening systems will use artificial flavor which actually increase over time and allow you to enjoy gum for a little bit longer the other thing about gum and flavor some flavors are stronger than others right so if you have gums that have peppermints or mints in them those are longer lasting more robust flavors now onto onions why does that flavor lasts so long and linger onions garlic they contain sulfur and those flavors as opposed to just dissolving and going into your stomach those flavors actually get in your bloodstream and so if you've ever had a large dose of garlic and then smelled your skin the next day you're exuding that garlic flavor when you're chewing gum the flavors are dissolving and simply put they're not going anywhere else but they're but your stomach they're breaking down whereas for onions and garlic those flavors are staying in your system perhaps for days depending on how much you ate all right now we have a question from bkru zavon how does the tongue know different tastes people your tongue has about give or take 10 000 teaspoons taste buds take in information using these receptors that's then signaling your brain what you're about to taste and that simple step is really important so that people don't start ingesting things that are bad for them back in the day scientists thought that your tongue was divided into sections and that you'd actually have to taste sweet at the front or sour on the sides but we now know that we have these taste receptors and they're spread evenly throughout the tongue so that you're able to taste all five basic taste throughout the tongue next up from zero six honda crv who is the person that created the flavor of flaming hot cheetos and where can i meet and talk to them guess what it's not a person it's like a whole team of people who create flavors so it's a marketing team it's a science team it's a product development team and that flavoring could have taken them years to make and guess what they're not going to talk to you because flavors are sort of the secret identity of foods right there's a reason the recipe for coca-cola is locked up in a safe so you might meet one of them but they've all signed nda's and they're not telling you anything all right so now we have another question from now theo and now theo asks a really important question what's a super taster the typical tongue has about 10 000 taste buds on it and anything over that means you're a super taster right so you've got these extra taste buds that means you're taking in way more information about food so for instance if i taste kale right like a really bitter kale that bitter might be we use scales in sensory evaluation so for intensity scales we use from 1 to 15. let's say that kale is at you know a 10 or 11 for me for a super taster that bitter because they have more receptors might taste like a 15 all the way at the end of the scale so bitter that like their gag reflexes kick in so there's actually a way to test if you're a super taster at home you just need a few things some food dye a q-tip and a piece of paper with a standard hole punch in it we're gonna bring in brandon who's a producer on the set to see if he's a super taster more than 35 happily means that brandon's a super taster i have this q-tip i'm just going to put a little bit of dye on it i'm going to go right in there the next step is going to be to count exactly how many papillae brandon has on his tongue uh-huh oh great shot and now i'm going to count them to see if he's a super taster there's exactly 35 which is what a typical taster would have so brandon's in the normal range not quite a super taster but maybe that's for the best next question from danny guerrero fruity pebbles are all the same flavor yet each one tastes different what is the science name for this situation placebo effect uh good guess but it's actually not the fruity pebbles are all the same flavor it's probably a combination of fruit so it could be cherry strawberry grape let's say but the colors are different your mind interprets those or takes that information in as those being different are really in different flavors a really interesting test was done with wine experts and they gave wine experts white wine colored with red dye and these experts every single one of them thought that white wine was red wine because of the red dye and the interesting thing is we eat with our eyes and so we get fooled all the time even professional tasters fooling consumers is something that consumer packaged goods companies have have been doing for a long time it's a way of saving costs there's a reason fruity pebbles don't have individual flavors the other thing is that flavor does something really interesting it's called migration so if you had an orange one and a green one eventually over time they'd start tasting all the same all right so eric sherry asks how do pop rocks work there's gas in those little pieces of candy that is activated when moisture hits them the one thing that makes pop rocks really interesting is that it's also textural you're actually hearing those popping and you're taking in a lot of sensory information with a pop rock so it's not just about the flavor it's like something's happening they're really a cool product in that you're really using all your senses when you're experiencing a pop rock and next up snot asks why does sprite from mcdonald's taste different than a sprite in bottle so the sprite you're getting from mcdonald's is flavoring and bubbly water that have come together likely out of a machine or a gun and sprite that's in a bottle comes from a manufacturing plant and has sort of a different profile packaging whether it's a bottle a cardboard box or a film wrapper oftentimes have flavors associated with them where do those you know flavors and or aromas come from they can come from the inks they can come from the plastics so one of the sort of misunderstood things is that sprite that comes out of a gun would taste like sprite in a bottle the ingredients in the actual sprite drink might be the same but the sprite bottle could have some flavors that come from the actual packaging all right so we have a question from itsy girl skype alexa this is in all caps how are different flavors of cheese created that is an interesting question and i am not a cheese maker but i will tell you that cheese starts with milk they add enzymes that change both the sugars in the cheese and the proteins and over time those tastes can go in a lot of different directions depending on the type of milk the type of enzymes so cheese is incredibly complex i mean i chased it a cheese with a client the other day and it had butter notes it had citrus notes it had umami it had all different notes in it and it's all dependent on how long you let it store what type of enzymes and what type of dairy you use this is from max attacks why do they put colors to taste especially when they make pink starbursts taste like strawberries effing liars strawberries aren't pink here's why they put colors to taste our brain is also taking in visual signals or visual cues from food so they put colors to taste to give us the cue that something is sweet or has a has a flavor if you look at a strawberry starburst it's not like red red like a strawberry it's still kind of you know it's still pinkish and the reason is they can't load the amount of red that you know would be required or would match a strawberry in that that candy that would be a lot of color there's also a legacy around red food dye certain food colorings are have been tied to you know illnesses back in the day they took the red m m out of the m m pack because there was legal implications around using red dye we have a question from men adams 95 i'm confused what is the flavor of coca-cola and this is an incredible question because oftentimes we don't really think of all the nuanced flavors in coca-cola so what's in coca-cola well it starts with the cola not right that's sort of the base flavor but then you can have a lot of brown spice most of us in the flavor community think there's a little sarsaparilla in there sarsaparilla is the base for root beer and then there's also this stick with me fruit flavor when you know how to taste you can really take coca-cola and analyze it and break out all of the flavors it's not just sweet it's not just cola it's a little spicy it's a little minty and it's a little fruity so if you've ever had a coke and a pepsi and tasted them well the tastes are different so the spice levels might be a little bit different but one thing's for sure the sweet level is vastly different guess which one's sweeter pepsi we have a question from i'm the critic how does one even explain the feeling slash taste of wasabi it's not really spicy or sour it just burns your nose okay this is actually a really interesting one because the flavor of wasabi and the spice when you're a professional taster you can piece those apart so the flavor of wasabi it's in the mustard family by the way a lot of people like into horseradish on steroids right because it's spicier than just a regular horseradish so a lot of people can explain it by saying it tastes like horseradish with an increased intensity so if horseradish is at a five wasabi might be out of 15 but it also has the taste of a root vegetable and is in the mustard family finally we have a question from arg i'm a pirate how do i become a ben and jerry's flavor guru okay great question it sounds like maybe you already have some practice in becoming one a lot of people come in to the world of flavor with a science background so that's an option you can go in that direction or you can get yourself a bunch of pints take it slow do what we call meditative eating and do a taste test right start really tasting what's what's in there and if you can start mapping the taste in in ben and jerry's i don't know maybe you can get hired as a as a guru a lot of food companies need consumer tasters so you can sign up for a consumer taste test with ben jerry's or an ice cream company to be a taster check that out okay that's it we're done with all the questions i really hope you guys learned something and had some fun and until next time [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 903,693

Keywords: beth kimmerle, beth kimmerle taste, beth kimmerle taste expert, beth kimmerle tasting, expert explains how tasting works, good taste, how taste works, how tasting works, innovation, ott tech support, science & technology, sour taste, supertaster, taste buds, taste buds explained, taste expert, taste questions, taste support, tasting, wired, wired how tasting works, wired tech support taste

Id: MtMkU-1p7-0

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022