How do panelists learn food descriptive analysis?
It’s like learning music. Remember the first time you heard an orchestra play a 40 minute symphony? It was a wall of integrated sound. If you kept listening, you began distinguishing the unique voices of individual instruments, melodies and the rhythm. When you became very familiar with the piece, you could tell whether the orchestra was balanced, on pitch and on beat. This is very much like learning to be a descriptive panelist. Potential panelists must pass a battery of taste tests, scaling exercises and interviews. Then, they begin a 150 hour training and internship program in which they learn to dissect flavor and food texture, to measure the intensity of sensory experiences and to utilize “Universal” scales. Like hearing a symphony for the first time, trainees are initially overwhelmed by the complexity of their task. However, with practice and repetition, trainees soon learn the components of individual products.
