“You’ll see, everything tastes better in Paris” said my mother on the way to the airport. Under my excitement for the upcoming study abroad experience, the neuroscientist in me wondered why. A week into Paris and a dozen baguettes, I began to realize that the sense of taste didn’t seem to occur without the influence from your other sensory systems. Instead of eating the baguette in my kitchen, I was eating it in front of the Eiffel Tower. This idea was confirmed on a cheese tasting excursion to a fromagerie. I have always loved cheese and I thought this would be an incredible experience; who wouldn’t want to taste some of the best cheese in the world right where they prepare it? This experience was, however, not what I expected and a confirmation to what I had been wondering.
At the fromagerie, we were taken to the basement where the cheeses were in the process of maturation. In other words, undergoing the procedure in which bacteria, rennet (curdled milk from a cow’s stomach) and yeasts/molds form and bring the cheese to its appearance and flavor. This was not unknown to me, but as I entered the basement a very distinct smell took over, and adding the mold image, I began to feel a nauseating sensation. Following this, the taste of the cheeses were not very enjoyable.
About halfway through the experience, the fromager (cheesemaker/seller) had us try 2 pepper seeds while pinching our noses and then un-pinching them to see the difference. The taste of the pepper increased so much the second I unpinched my nose. Right there everything made sense: the cheese was not tasting the way it should have because my other senses were altering my perception of it. If I had tried these same cheeses in another environment the taste would’ve been different.
This mix-up of sensory experiences, especially taste and smell, happens because both systems can be stimulated by food chemicals and after a bite odor molecules reach the olfactory receptors through the retronasal passage (Lundström et al. 2010). Studies show that olfactory stimuli significantly affect the experience of flavors and appetite, and these olfactory-perception food preferences are learned during an individual’s life (Yeomans 2006). For example, a study on multi-sensory effects on diet found that rather than flavor, the orthonasal olfactory perception was a stronger predictor of overeating (De Wijk et al. 2004). This explains why I had a different experience than my classmates, and why things have tasted differently in Paris than in USA.
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Figure 1. (A) Trying the camembert cheese at the basement of a fromagerie. (B) My reaction to the experience of the cheese tasting.
Figure 2. A picture of what the basement of the fromagerie looked like. Here, the different types of cheeses are undergoing the maturation process.
References
de Wijk, R. A., Polet, I. A., Engelen, L., van Doorn, R. M., & Prinz, J. F. (2004). Amount of ingested custard dessert as affected by its color, odor, and texture. Physiology & behavior, 82(2-3), 397-403.
Lundström, J. N., Boesveldt, S., & Albrecht, J. (2010). Central processing of the chemical senses: an overview. ACS chemical neuroscience, 2(1), 5-16.
Yeomans, M. R. (2006). Olfactory influences on appetite and satiety in humans. Physiology & Behavior, 89(1), 10-14.