Major Related Food and Beverage Industry Topics, and The Correlation of Taste and smell in the body

allisonnahrwold
Apr 10, 2019
2 min read

This week’s class showcased each student’s ability to relate the food and beverage industry to their specific major. Each paper that was shared was truly fascinating, and displayed that each student used their creativity and intuition to find a topic related to their major. There were papers on marketing of foods, restaurants using social media, the fermentation trend, restaurant franchises, crimes happening in restaurants, and many more. While it may be easy for me and the fellow business majors to find a topic relating to our major, and the food industry, I am truly stunned each week when the criminology majors share their topics. If I were a criminology major trying to find a topic related to the food industry, I truly do not know where I would begin, but each week these students knock it out of the park.

One criminology student that truly wowed me this week was Tori. Her paper was a beautiful combination of her major, the food and beverage industry, and our research project of the day, taste and smell/sound correlation in the human body. Tori explored the wine industry, and the science behind music affecting the taste of wine when being played in wine tastings or grocery stores. She described how taste and sound signals can cross over in our brain and affect the flavor we perceive. To relate to her major, Tori spoke of how the sense of smell can be used in locating the bodies of criminals. She described how the sense of smell is much stronger than the sense of sight in the human body, and can be used as a powerful tool in detecting criminals.

After discussing our papers, we began to learn about the correlation of taste and smell in the human brain and how they interact with each-other. We learned that what we perceive as taste relies heavily on the scent of the food. As stated by Healthy Years, “The full appreciation of a food relies on both its flavor and which of the four taste categories it falls into,” but also that “Flavor is a combination of taste and smell. Cells in the nose, mouth, and throat help interpret different smells and identify flavors.” (2006 p. 1) When we eat a food, though we may think the taste our brain receives comes strictly from our taste buds, it is a combination of taste and smell signals. The taste buds determine whether the food is bitter, sweet, salty, sour, or umami, but the scent receptors, or olfactory nerves, determine the specific flavor and help us to differentiate the millions of different flavors available to us.

References

Better taste through better smell: the connection between smell receptors and the taste buds is

intimate. Here are ways for you to keep that link active. (2006). Healthy Years, (10), 1.

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