Food Technology Magazine | Research
Expanding the Scope of Sensory Analysis
At Massey University’s Feast lab, Joanne Hort and her team are measuring consumers’ emotional responses to food, adding innovative new approaches to traditional sensory methodologies.
Study participants evaluate products in the Feast lab’s digital immersive (café) space. Photo courtesy of Joanne Hort
Massey University sensory science professor Joanne Hort has been thinking about the way emotions affect an individual’s response to food since she was a graduate student more than two decades ago.
During her doctoral work at Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom, Hort was part of a project that assessed consumers’ sensory responses to a popular brand of black currant cordial. In that project, the researchers found that while various samples were liked by tasters in equal measure, they…
