Consumer tastes vary wildly around the world, and even within countries there can be marked differences in favoured flavours and textures. A new study conducted for Costa Coffee by food psychologist Greg Tucker and the University of Nottingham’s Flavour Research Group investigated taste preferences in the UK as influenced by culture, geography and environment.
“Just as with spoken dialects, where accent is placed on different syllables and vowel formations, people from different regions have developed enhanced sensitivities to certain taste sensations and seek foods that trigger these,” said Professor Andy Taylor of the University of Nottingham.
The study was done using chemical, physical, psychological, sensory and brain imagining studies to see the link between a food’s flavour and the way it is sensed, plus face to face interviews and quant data from Costa’s database. What they developed were broad taste dialects across the UK where the significant difference was based around the different parts of the tongue stimulated. For example the rich & creamy flavours loved by Scots are sensed at the back of the tongue, whereas people in the North East tend to prefer flavours which stimulate the tip of the tongue.
What this all suggests is that when you’re dealing with mass-market food perhaps there is some logic in tweaking formulations/ingredients for different geographic markets based on a more scientific approach with the part of the tongue stimulated rather than more qualitative methods of taste testing regionally.
Knowing a taste dialect of a culture can also assist in market matching food products. In the UK for instance they found that Scots eat relatively slowly and like melt-in-the-mouth foods like Yorkshire pudding and Italian ice-cream. In the North East, on the other hand, desire for immediate satisfaction is said to stem from the region’s industrial history, where workers needed sustenance fast. The Midland taste dialect is build around soft and suckable foods, with a sweet dimension, and foods that can be eaten with the hands. The researchers suggest that these factors mean the dialect was already predisposed to accept the Balti food introduced by Asian communities. The south had the least defined taste dialect, a reflection of its status as a melting pot of cultures from all round the UK and abroad.
In Australia we probably don’t have distinct regional cuisines and cultures but we do have a very multicultural society and each culture would have its own taste dialect. Mostly this is dealt with in a retail context by simply offering different cuisines but this research suggests there is another way. It also suggests there is a way of working out how to tweak an international cuisine more scientifically to suit the Australian palette.
