The company Opertech Bio, based in Philadelphia (USA), has succeeded in patenting a methodology and a device for the evaluation of taste. Is aboutMicrotiter Operant Gustometer(MOG),a system that allows both taste quality and palatability to be measured, as the creators have made public through a study published in the magazinePLOS ONE.
Rats previously trained to behave as expert tasters were used in the study. The choice of these animals to carry out the experiment was made due to their “extraordinary sensory capabilities, the ease of learning to perform complex tasks and the coincidence with humans in food preferences”, as echoed by the SINC agency.
With the MOG system,taste quality measurement was achieved through the experimental paradigm of taste discrimination. The rats were trained to press two levers in exchange for a food pellet-shaped reward after testing the substances offered to them in a 96-well plate.
To receive the prize, the rats had to press the right lever if the substance was a standard (for example, a sugar solution) or the left if it had any other flavor. By comparing the percentage of times the animal pressed the right lever, the scientists were able to quantify the degree of similarity between the new flavor and the standard.
In the experiment,the palatability of the solutions present on the plate was calculated by counting the number of times the rat’s tongue entered each of the wells. The beam of a laser beam projected at the top of the well was interrupted each time the animal’s tongue licked that well. Each interruption was counted as a lick.
Compared to other tests to assess palatability, the MOG system lick rate “has been shown to be independent of other factors such as thirst and hunger, and is therefore valued by researchers as a purely hedonistic indication associated with stimulus. of the flavor ”, indicates the study.
According to Kyle R. Palmer, Scientific Director of Opertech Bio and lead author of the study, the system can perform flavor analysis rigorously andmathematically define both the flavor quality and palatability characteristics of multiple components or ingredients during a single test, “which is in contrast to traditional taste measurement methods that are often limited to evaluating a few samples at a time.”
