- [Narrator] Have you ever wondered
what would it be like to taste food for a living?
Well, that's what these people do.
They're called Sensory Evaluators.
You might call them taste testers,
but they're so much more than that.
- My name is Gail Vance Civille.
I am the founder, owner, and president of Sensory Spectrum,
and I have been in the sensory business for over 50 years.
You do the math.
- [Narrator] Sensory evaluators are trained
for over 100 hours.
More on that later.
They evaluate the texture, flavor,
or fragrance of a product.
From toilet paper to chocolate to cheese, they test it all.
Why do sensory evaluators do what they do?
- Very often our job is to look at prototypes
with some ingredient substituted,
so that we can tell the product developers,
yes you are safe making this
in the place of your current product,
and still having the same sensory properties.
- [Narrator] There's a whole host of reasons
why a product might change.
Like swapping out an ingredient
for something cheaper or healthier.
Take for instance, Kraft Mac & Cheese.
Remember when they changed to all natural ingredients?
No preservatives or artificial dyes,
but the flavor stayed exactly the same.
Boom!
Thank your sensory evaluators.
- The role of sensory evaluation
is to stand next to the product developer and say,
if you have a charge to make a new product,
to make an improved product,
to make an ingredient substitution,
I am here to tell you whether or not you succeeded.
Were you able to maintain the appearance, the flavor,
and the texture of that product.
That is my job.
I stand there and say, you know what,
this is very, very close,
or it's spot on, I think you should move forward with it.
- [Narrator] So how would Gail describe cheese?
- Cheese.
There's either sheep, cow, or goat dairy,
so there's milk and then there's milk fat,
and then there are the fermented notes that are in the milk.
So let's take cheddar cheese, which is a cow milk cheese,
that has milky notes, milk-fat notes, nutty notes,
skunky notes, sometimes fecal,
or as we like to describe with the technical term, poop.
And it actually belongs there,
when you have farmhouse cheddar cheeses
from England or Scotland or Wales,
or some places in Australia,
you will have a fecal note that belongs there.
And then you also will have, potentially,
some fruity notes as well,
and salty, sweet, sour, and bitter,
and then you have all the textures,
which is the hardness and the melt,
and the chewiness or cohesiveness,
and how fast it disappears in your mouth,
and whether or not it leaves a fatty film.
- [Narrator] To evaluate a new or altered product,
they gather a panel.
Each panelist is handed a sample.
In this case, pasta sauce.
They'll taste the sauce
and evaluate its flavor, texture, and smell.
Then they rate each attribute on a scale.
- Bitter?
- [Panelist] Zero.
- Zero. - One.
- Zero. - Two.
- Zero. - One.
- [Narrator] There's an entire book of terms
to describe different foods.
Gail wrote it.
- Brassy.
Minerally flinty, if you will.
Sweet and sour.
Milky notes, nutty notes, skunky notes.
- [Narrator] How do these panelists identify
how salty or sweet something is?
During training,
they're exposed to different levels of flavor.
A two salt is very mildly salty,
while a 20 salt is closer to ocean water, and so on.
Panelists learn these until they're second nature.
- The whole idea of being a great panelist
is to never think about what you're doing.
Just do it, like a hockey goalie.
Just catch the puck.
You're no longer mentally processing.
When I taste, I literally feel like the sample
goes into my mouth,
and then the sample tells me about itself.
- [Narrator] How has this training
affected sensory evaluators in their daily lives?
- I'm not a normal consumer.
I am not normal.
I am very picky.
If I'm in a restaurant where a lot of people
are wearing fragrance, I will not enjoy it.
So it has jaded me or poisoned me or corrupted me
to being really obsessively picky about
what I'm eating, where I'm eating, and when I'm eating.
- [Narrator] For better or worse,
actually tasting what you eat may be a good thing.