Pet food taste-testing by humans rose to a new level of formality this year, with the publication of two scholarly studies.
A paper called Optimising the Sensory Characteristics and Acceptance of Canned Cat Food: Use of a Human Taste Panel appeared in February. Its author, Professor GJ Pickering, of Brock University in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada, reports: “Cats are sensitive to flavour differences in diet, very discriminative in food selection, and clearly unable to verbalise their likes and dislikes. These issues have dogged the industry for decades.” Pickering explains that taste tests with volunteer cats suffer three drawbacks. They are “expensive to maintain, time-consuming, and yield limited and often equivocal data”.
He offers an alternative: “In-house tasting trials by a human taster are commonly conducted in the industry, although there is a paucity of relevant information in the scientific literature.”
His study serves up a hearty helping of information…
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.