‘Magnetic tongue’ may identify food taste

A new ‘magnetic tongue’, using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), may be able to taste food and help companies to develop and test new food products, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Aarhus in Denmark and the University of Naples in Italy used NMR metabolomic fingerprints recorded for 18 canned tomato samples to correlate them to sensory descriptors for sweetness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness, tomato, metal taste, density and redness.

The method allowed the researchers, which published their results in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, to differentiate the analysed samples based on their chemical composition.

The researchers noted that with NMR food processing companies could develop and test new or reformulated food products as it is a quick, sensitive and inexpensive method.

However, they also said that the perception of odour and flavours of food is a complicated physiological and psychological process that cannot be explained by simple models.