the swing of things

This week marks the third and final 4-day work week for me for the month of January.  And I must admit it terrifies me to think how long next week is going to drag on!  Aside from next week being a normal 5-day working week, I am starting taste panel training sessions for the final part of my thesis project.  Although this is exciting, I am also anxious about all the time and effort required in organizing a taste panel.  Nonetheless, I think this panel will be the best way to get back into the swing of things.

Taste panels are commonly used in meat science research to assess the palatability of new products, cooking methods, or aging techniques.  In my case, this taste panel will assess the palatability-or tasting/eating quality-of the extended sirloin cap. Taste panels are a means to detect differences in product tenderness, juiciness, flavor, connective tissue content, off-flavor, visual appearance, and aroma.  It is the true way to determine the way a product will be perceived in the industry.

With that being said, there are two types of taste panels: consumer or trained.  Consumer panels are often conducted in retail or restaurant settings where consumers have little knowledge on product background, and the process of taste analysis.  Consumer panels provide insight to how the general population will receive the product and it's attributes, and often have a large sample population.  Because of this, sample variation is quite large and statistical significance may be difficult to achieve.  Consumer panels also take an immense amount of time and collaboration with grocery stores or restaurants to plan.  Incentives are often given to consumer taste panelists, such as coupons, to increase participation.

As you may have guessed, I will be conducting a trained taste panel session within the next few weeks.  Trained sessions include taste panelists that have been educated on the attributes of a particular product.  These panelists are typically trained using product that is extremely tough, tender, juicy, etc. in order to create a organoleptic scale upon which they will later "grade" a product's acceptability. In my case, panelists will be trained on the extended sirloin cap quality.  We will utilize product from the anterior and posterior ends of the primal, where a true tenderness gradient exists.  Our primary goal for this taste panel is to determine the tenderness differences of the cap depending upon location. For that reason, each steak's location from it's primal will be maintained throughout the panel. Panelists will be asked to rate the product on a hedonic scale (1-8) on the product's apparent juiciness, tenderness, off-flavor, and connective tissue content.  Taste panel sessions will be held twice a day and will consist of 6 panelist.  These panelist will be compensated with a paycheck for their participation and offered chocolate each day--sounds like the real deal, right?!  I can say that I am jealous! haha

All things considered, taste panels are a very important part of what we do as meat scientist.  If we develop a product that consumers find tough, or dry, we need to reconsider how the product was made.  It truly is our way of creating and developing an acceptable and quality product for consumers!