Associate Professor, Food Science The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA, United States
Abstract: The detection of lipid oxidation in foods and ingredients is critical to food quality and shelf life. Numerous instrumental are being used, sometimes with limited or little correlation to each other and to human perception of lipid oxidation products, and/or limited comparability when applied to other samples.
In this talk I will review fundamentals of human sensory perception with a focus on olfactory performance and how individuals’ sensory results may differ due to genetics, prior experiences, or illnesses, all affecting sensory results and correlation with instrumental methods.
I will then go over commonly used sensory methods to evaluate the lipid oxidation status of foods and ingredients and highlight strengths and shortcomings of each method. Throughout, examples of lipid oxidation relevant applications of human and instrumental methods will be provided to illustrate the strength of using humans and machines to measure lipid oxidation.
