Chemo-Sensing and Consumer Acceptability for Food Innovation

The course aims to provide the basic notions to understand the role of consumers in the transition towards sustainable food systems. The course also aims to provide students with a general understanding of the various variables influencing the acceptability and rejection of food and process innovations starting from the molecular mechanisms underlying food perception to the broader contextual, psychological and cultural factors. Through the course, the student will learn about the strategies to identify, model and design innovative functional ingredients active on taste and somatosensory perception, to tackle industrial off-taste/off-flavour problems in novel food products obtained with biofunctional ingredients. The combination of frontal lessons (synchronous), practical laboratories with exercises, and group discussion is designed to provide students with both theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience. This integrated approach fosters a comprehensive understanding of the molecular basis of chemosensory and somatosensory perception, as well as sensory and consumer science, and their application in food innovation and consumer science. This course complements and integrates the knowledge acquired in other courses, such as Design of Food Products and Processes Using the Quality by Design Approach and Consumer Science Methods and, in general, all courses dealing with food process and product innovation.

At the end of the course, the student will acquire an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the molecular basis of taste, olfaction and somatosensory perception of food, as well as of the factors influencing consumer perception, preferences, and food choices, including physiological, psychological, and contextual factors. The student will also acquire knowledge for using the main methods to measure and predict the taste of a new ingredient, knowledge of the key trends and challenges in agri-food systems and the role of consumer science in promoting tasty, sustainable and health-oriented food innovations. Students will learn to apply the strategies to design tasty food and food ingredients to increase consumers acceptability and health. Students will develop skills related to work independently and critically analyze and judge scientific literature as well as skills related to critical oral and written presentation at a high scientific level.