Nina Baryłko-Pikielna

SGGW – Warsaw Agriculture University. Poland

Faculty of Human Nutrition and Consumer Sciences

Nowoursynowska 159 c

02-776 Warsaw, Poland

phone: 048 22 593 70 52

fax: 048 22 593 70 40

 pikielna@alpha.sggw.waw.pl

As compared to “regular” foods, refreshing products as mint-flavoured tablets and chewing gum and alike are very special materials as concerns their use and sensory effects. They are purposely kept in the mouth very long as compared with regular solid foods (5-10 times longer); during that time they are processed similarly as food stuffs - sucked or masticated and mixed with saliva, but not swallowed; their sensory effect depends mainly on chemestetic (irritant) stimulation but not on gustatory or olfactory ones, as it is the case with foods.

All above phenomena develop in time. Time is also critical in perceived combination of irritation and flavour sensations: it affects their intensity and quality, mutual ratio of the attributes, their overlapping effect, and duration.

Sensory evaluation of such peculiar products requires special attention and thorough methodological preparation. Most of commonly used sensory methods make “single-point” measurement and ignore time as sensory dimension - therefore they are not relevant. T-I method is the only one, which takes it into consideration and allows quantitative measurement of each attribute’s intensity changes over time. Such measurements deliver a set of time – related information, not just single one (maximum intensity). Their disadvantage is that they shall be performed “one by one”, as only one attribute can be traced in time, what is in the case of refreshing products very time consuming.

To check appropriateness of T-I procedure for measurement of refreshing/cooling effect or its potential alternative in above mentioned products, small experiment was performed in which samples of mint tablets and chewing gum were evaluated parallel by T-I method and by Time-Related-Profiling (TRP) procedure where the intensity of four identified main attributes of the samples (including refreshing/cooling) was measured and recorded in certain pre-determined discrete time distances. The obtained results will be presented and informative value of both methods, discriminability and reproducibility of the results and practical aspects of their applicability to refreshing products (including non-food ones, e.g. toothpaste) will be discussed and concluded.

Slides                                                                                        Back to programme