How to Taste Ice Cream

TOK/ PerceptionsInvestigating your Taste Buds

Warm-up: On one of the cards give to you, write a description of the most delicious food that you can imagine. On the other card, write a description of the grossest food that you can imagine.

Warm-up Question:

When choosing something at a restaurant, how do you know what will taste the best?

Goal: To investigate how we taste and the role that perceptions play in altering our tastes.

“How to Taste Ice Cream”

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TEMPERING

While many folks like to dish out ice cream immediately after getting it from the fridge, it actually is best to take the ice cream out of the freezer and let it sit for about 5-10 minutes. This is called "tempering," a step that helps maximize flavor release and enhance the overall taste.

VISUAL APPEAL Take a good look at the product - at it's color and texture. Does it appear appetizing? Part of tasting any food is the impression it makes on all of our senses -- not just the sense of taste.

SPOONING

Using a spoon, scrape a small sample off the surface. Now unlike the way we usually eat, invert the spoon so that the ice cream comes into contact with your tongue instead of the roof of your mouth. While this may seem like an "upside down" way to go about things, years of practice prove it to be the most effective way of delivering flavor to the 9,000 tastebuds in your mouth.

MOUTH FEEL

Coat your tongue with the ice cream. Roll it around and smack your lips. Let the complexities of the flavor build and spread so you can get a full sense of its taste. But don't yield to temptation and swallow the sample yet, or you'll have to start over again because the tasting process is not complete.

AROMA

Now close your mouth. Bring the ice cream's aroma up through the nose to sense the top notes and savor in the flavor's scent. Remember, all of the senses contribute to a food's taste, including your sense of smell!

FINISH

After you have extracted a definite impression of the product's taste, you can let it slide away down the throat and feel the taste sensation dissipate.

Source: The DairyInformationResearchCenter at the University of California, Davis.

Nervous system – Taste -What is happening in your mouth when you taste????

Function: To protect your body from unsafe foods
Taste buds: Most of your taste buds are on your tongue
Basic tastes: Sweet, salty, sour and bitter

Protecting your body

Your sense of taste protects you from unsafe foods. If you ate poisonous or rotten foods, you would probably spit them out immediately, because they usually taste revolting. That way, you stop them from entering your stomach.

Your sense of taste also helps you maintain a consistent chemical balance in your body. Liking sugar and salt for example, satisfies your body's need for carbohydrates and minerals. Similarly, eating sour foods such as oranges and lemons supplies your body with essential vitamins.

Taste buds

Your mouth contains around 10,000 taste buds, most of which are located on and around the tiny bumps on your tongue. Every taste bud detects five primary tastes:

Sour
Sweet
Bitter
Salty
Umami - salts of certain acids (for example monosodium glutamate or MSG)

Each of your taste buds contains 50-100 specialized receptor cells. Sticking out of every single one of these receptor cells is a tiny taste hair that checks out the food chemicals in your saliva. When these taste hairs are stimulated, they send nerve impulses to your brain. Each taste hair responds best to one of the five basic tastes.

Tastes and flavours

For you to enjoy the full flavor of a sizzling Sunday roast or a rich chocolate mousse, you need more than your basic tastes. You also require your sense of smell. If you have a cold, the lining of your nose swells and you temporarily lose your sense of smell. Even though your tongue is still able to identify the basic tastes, the food you eat will taste bland.

Additionally, temperature and texture influence how much you appreciate foods. When you eat 'hot' foods like chilli peppers, you actually excite the pain receptors in your mouth.

SOURCE:

SciFri 1.28.05

Trans fats are identified by the term "partially hydrogenated" on a food label. They're nasty, artificial fats, created to add to a food's shelf life.

Fat facts

By Deane Morrison

Published January 29, 2005

You're looking for a package of cookies and want to avoid the most unhealthful fats. The label contains the words "soybean oil." So you buy it. But can you be sure it was the right decision?

In recent years, you've probably heard plenty about "good" and "bad" cholesterol, not to mention trans fat, omega-3s, and all manner of oily things that we should or shouldn't put in our stomachs. It's not easy to sort out all the actors in the debate over fats, but it's worth a try.

First of all, we could not live without the "grease" of life. Fatty substances, or lipids, constitute the bulk of our cell membranes. They are the sheaths that insulate our nerves so they can carry electrical messages; the steroid hormones, including sex hormones; and, of course, the stored food reserves that also keep us warm, pad our derrieres, plump our lips, and send social signals about our health and age.

"Without fat to carry flavor compounds, our taste buds can't pick them up," says Dan Gallaher, a professor of food science and nutrition. "It's hard to get around that problem in fat-free food. The Holy Grail of the food industry is a low-fat cheddar cheese that tastes good."

The fats we consume tend to be delicious or to make other foods delicious, and there lies the rub. Fat-laden foods taste so good because many flavor compounds are fat soluble, meaning they dissolve in fat so you can taste them.

What's up with hydrogen?

If it's solid at room temperature, it's a fat. If it's liquid, it's an oil. In general, the fats and oils in food are all fatty acids. Fatty acids are basically carbon atoms hitched to each other and to varying numbers of hydrogen atoms.

If a fatty acid--like stearic acid--has all the hydrogen atoms bonded to it that it can hold, it's called a saturated fat (it's saturated with hydrogen atoms).

Some fatty acids, like linolenic acid--found in flaxseed, fish, and canola oil--have room for more hydrogen atoms. They're called polyunsaturated fats because they have several places (thus the poly) where hydrogen could be added (thus they're "unsaturated" with hydrogen).

Monounsaturated oils, such as canola, olive, and peanut oils, contain just one carbon and hydrogen bond (thus the mono) and are considered healthy.

Then there are omega-3 fatty acids, referring to the fact that there's room for hydrogen atoms starting three carbon atoms in from the end of the fat molecule (omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet). The other "omega" acids are the omega-6s, which have room for hydrogen atoms six carbon atoms from the end of the molecule.

Omega-3 fats are associated with good heart health, but modern diets include too little of them because people don't eat enough fatty fish. What's needed is a balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, with the scales weighted slightly on the side of the omega-6s. Ideally, one should eat three to five omega-6s for each omega-3. But at this point in our history, we get too much omega-6, found in corn oil and so in corn-fed beef and products containing corn oil.

Trans fats are associated with poor heart health. They are artificially produced by the process of partial hydrogenation, in which hydrogen is added to unsaturated fats in order to prolong the shelf life of foods.

To avoid trans fat, the best thing to do is look for the term "partially hydrogenated" on a label. In the example at the start of this piece, "soybean oil" all by itself is a good ingredient, but "partially hydrogenated soybean oil" should be avoided. The most notorious sources of trans fat are products that mimic butter, cream, or milk: margarines and shortenings (except nonhydrogenated types), nondairy creamer, nondairy whipped cream substitutes, and some dry cocoa mixes. Also, foods fried in oil, especially oil that is changed infrequently, are loaded with trans fats. That includes much fast food, especially French fries.

A few notes on cholesterol. It's all one substance, and the "bad" LDL and "good" HDL refer to the carrier particles that transport cholesterol either into (bad) or away from (good) our arteries. But the effect of eating cholesterol isn't the same for everybody.

Trans fats are bad news, but even those reputed paragons of virtue, the polyunsaturated oils, can be problematic. Paul Addis, a retired professor of food science and nutrition, says that certain carbon atoms in polyunsaturated oils can be unstable and lead to the formation of toxic substances. If you take fish oil capsules, for example, he recommends cutting a capsule open and taking a whiff to make sure the oil hasn't spoiled.

"If it it smells like open ocean, it's OK," says Addis. "But if it has a strong fish odor, don't eat it."

Likewise, the villains in black hats--saturated fats--aren't necessarily all bad. Gallaher, working with colleague Craig Hassel, found that rats fed stearic acid (a saturated fatty acid) excreted more cholesterol in their droppings. Later, working with other colleagues, Gallaher found this happened because dietary stearic acid interfered with the absorption of dietary cholesterol in the rats' intestines.

"Some people respond to increased cholesterol in their diet with an increase in blood cholesterol, and some don't," says Gallaher. It would be wonderful to have an easy way to tell who's who. But for now, he says, the best marker for predicting heart disease is to keep getting your cholesterol levels checked.

Of all the properties of fats and oils, the most unwelcome is their tendency to be fattening. In all three categories of food--fats, proteins, and carbohydrates--we derive energy from breaking bonds between carbon and hydrogen atoms. Fat packs about twice the energy, gram for gram, as either protein or carbs because it is so rich in hydrogen.

To avoid excess fat and the wrong kinds of fat, Gallaher advises several measures: Trim visible fat from meat and buy lean meats; if you must fry, change the cooking oil frequently and use oils with lots of omega-3s, like canola; avoid partially hydrogenated oils in food; and eat fatty fish, flaxseed and canola oil.

A couple of parting thoughts in defense of fats. Fats are vital because they allow us to absorb fat-soluble vitamins. Without fats, we would fall apart from lack of vitamins A, D, E, and K. Fats also signal youth and, in some cases, beauty. A well-rounded face with full lips tells the world we're young and healthy. Lotions help us retain some skin firmness because they contain oils, which seal in water. And as much as we struggle to lose weight, over the years, we mourn the loss of fat when it disappears from under our eyes and from our lips. Sometimes the losses can be quite striking. Have you seen Mick Jagger recently?

Trans fats: Just under the deadline

Here's how several processors removed trans fats before the Jan. 1 labeling deadline.

FoodProcessing.com

By Kantha Shelke, Ingredients Editor

Trans fatty acids (TFAs) have developed a reputation for being the deadliest fat in the American diet since the discovery they contribute to inflammation, coronary heart disease and other health issues. The food industry’s efforts to reduce or remove TFAs are causing a paradigm shift in the marketplace and significant differences in products that had not changed for decades.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required the amount of trans fats to be listed on the Nutrition Facts panel of all packaged food products as of Jan. 1. Amounts less than 0.5g did not need any declaration. While there was no mandate for their removal nor any scary warnings about what TFAs do, consumers have become surprisingly aware of their dangers over the past year. Many food processors saw Jan. 1 as a deadline for their elimination.

“We estimate within three years after the effective date, trans fat labeling will prevent from 600 to 1,200 cases of coronary heart disease and 250 to 500 deaths each year,” Scott Gottlieb, FDA’s deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, reported at a Nov. 30, 2005, conference.

The FDA mandate does not apply to all foods. Raw fish, meat and chicken are exempted, so are foods bought at in-store bakeries and delis, as well as foods intended to be eaten where they are purchased, which also excludes all restaurant and foodservice offerings. Also exempt are small retailers (grossing less than $500,000 in annual sales or selling less than $50,000 worth of foods) and small-scale producers, provided they file a notice annually with the FDA. Additionally, the FDA has allowed a number of manufacturers to finish their on-hand stock of labels before complying.

In Canada, regulations required the listing of TFAs (if more than 0.2g per serving) to the Nutrition Facts table by Dec. 12, 2005. Small manufacturers have until Dec. 12, 2007 to comply.

Critics of any delays or exemptions argue that the multinationals changed nearly overnight to reduce or eliminate their TFA content in 2004, when Denmark mandated TFA to less than 2 percent of total fat in processed foods.

For ConAgra, removing trans fats from tub margarine spreads was easy, but removing them from stick margarine was a challenge.

Those who claim TFAs can be eliminated easily in processed foods do not understand the depth, proliferation and impact of partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) in food processing and the limitations of the solutions developed thus far. Nor do they understand how Americans select and decide what to buy and eat.

Even though TFAs do not have to be removed, “The timing is just right. With obesity statistics at an all-time high and worsening and health issues topping consumer concerns, the pressure is coming from all sides,” says Yokima Cureton, product developer at Novozymes AS’s ( U.S. headquarters in Franklinton, N.C. “Influential retailers like Wal-Mart are refusing to stock shelves with products without TFA labeling and are actively seeking products with no TFAs.”

Currently there is no drop-in replacement for TFAs in processed foods. Some companies are using solutions that lead to healthier but costlier products, while others are settling for saturated fats and products that are not any healthier. And it appears to us at Corvus Blue, my food industry competitive intelligence firm, that none of the reformulated products truly matches the original.

It wasn’t easy

The current challenge is both technical and philosophical, according to Ted Pelloso, senior research leader at ConAgra Foods ( Omaha, Neb. “There are many ways to remove TFAs. Each company has to decide the route most appropriate for them and their loyal consumers. The key is to make products indistinguishable from the incumbents…so as to continue pleasing and retaining consumers.”

The path to removing TFAs is difficult. Much of this difficulty stems from a general lack of understanding of what exactly TFAs do in foods to produce the characteristic light and flaky pastries; crunchy chips and snacks that don’t turn rancid rapidly; soft, moist baked goods with aerated volumes; and french fries and fried chicken that are crisp and taste great every time.

The difficulty is further confounded by the high expectations of American consumers, who want quality and taste in their processed foods, usually paramount to everything else including health considerations.