Is it impossible to identify taste without visual information such as color?

Abstract

[Objective] Humans taste "deliciousness" not only through taste, but also through the five senses, and vision is the first sense that works to judge "delicious" by looking at food. In this study, we focused on color among visual information, and examined whether color affects taste discrimination as one of the effects of color on taste, and tested the hypothesis that it would be impossible to distinguish taste without visual information such as color.

[Methods]In Survey 1, subjects were put on nasal plugs and sensory evaluation was conducted to determine what kind of fruit juice it was using three types of 100% juice (apple, grape, and tangerine) as a sample. Subjects who answered all of them correctly were asked to perform Survey 2. In Survey 2, the three samples used in Survey 1 were randomly combined in a random number table, and sensory evaluation was performed in which the types of samples were answered by wearing nasal plugs and blindfolds. In consideration of the confusion between olfactory and taste information, all surveys were conducted with subjects wearing nasal plugs so that they would not be affected by information from the sense of smell. In Survey 2, they were asked to wear blindfolds in addition to nasal plugs to block information from vision. The reason why sensory evaluation was performed in stages 1 and 2 is that it is possible to compare the difference in the presence or absence of visual information by conducting survey 2 by conducting survey 2 by subjects who were confirmed to be able to distinguish taste in the presence of visual information in Survey 1.

[Results・Discussion] In Survey 2, the overall correct answer rate was 77%. By fruit type, 76% answered correctly for apples, 60% for grapes, and 96% for tangerines.The hypothesis that it is impossible to distinguish taste without visual information such as color has been overturned. Since the sourness and bitterness characteristic of mandarin oranges taste are low thresholds, it is easy to distinguish them only by taste information without visual information such as color.