ARS 390 

Ieok Cheng Chang

REFLECTION: Guest Speaker Dr. Arianna Maffei 

2020/11/4

 

Dr. Arianna Maffei’s presentation about the science of taste reminds me of articles I read. In those articles, they discuss how colors and culture differences would affect our taste perception. In this reflection, I would like to expand more on them.

 

There is a science center specializing in taste in a city in France called Dijon. It has been established for 15 years and many experiments on taste have been done there. Once they did a cross-cultural survey and the results were quite interesting. The method of the experiment is to look for participants who come from different countries with different races to taste various things, and then ask them to choose adjectives to describe relative feelings. Take cinnamon as an example. French people think it is spicy, American Texas people think it’s sweet, and Vietnamese people say it’s not edible at all; Durian is a corrupt and disgusting taste for Texans, and the French think that people in Southeast Asia who love durian are gifted to swallow this kind of thing. 

 

The other experiment is about how color affects judgment on taste, and the result is also amazing: the researcher invited a few professional sommeliers to taste wines. The first glass was white wine, and every sommelier expressed his opinion on this glass of wine. The second glass is “red” wine, everyone is also invited to express their opinions. But in fact these two glasses of wine are both white wine. The only difference is the second glass of white wine dyed with red odorless pigments. As a result, no sommelier even noticed that the glass of red wine was white wine mixed with pigments.

 

Colors, smells, habits and cultural backgrounds could all affect our taste perception. It also reflects that subjectivity on taste is inevitable. Objectivity and subjectivity are not absolute opposition, but a comparison in degree. Subjective with fewer blind spots makes our thoughts become more objective. Therefore, it is necessary to minimize the subjective impact when making judgments to avoid letting personal taste become a prejudice.