All in the best possible taste

11:40am Sunday 3rd August 2008

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I can’t say I rate the staff uniform – paper hairnet, over-shoes, and a long white coat – essential though they may be for work in a factory making baby food.

However, I am not here to make a fashion statement.

Being a journalist has opened some intriguing doors for me down the years and none more so than the one which led me to the inner sanctum of Heinz Kendal.

The factory – formerly Farleys – makes powdered infant milk and cereals, special dietary products like Complan and bottled infant milk for hospitals and the like. It employs about 200 people.

Heinz Kendal is also home to a team which subjects Heinz famous tomato sauce and all its other food ‘varieties’ to a special kind of sensory scrutiny.

They call it ‘quantatative descriptive analysis’ – QDA for short; that’s ‘extreme taste testing’ to you and me.

There are about 50 people on the tasting panel – among them the Gazette’s own wine columnist, Derek Kingwell.

The panellists span the age spectrum and come from many walks of life. What they have in common is an ability not just to analyse but also to be able to give detailed descriptions of the taste sensations they are subjected to.

Sensory assessment manager Liz Dew is the lady in charge of the tasting panel. She has been with Heinz for more than 30 years, latterly looking after quality assurance (shelf-life testing) before being asked to head up the sensory testing unit which the company established at its Kendal factory in 2004.

“We were already doing the shelf-life testing but the sensory facility was under-utilised,” explained Liz.

“Heinz wanted more consumer insight into its products. And you can’t do that unless you understand what the customer wants.”

And so Heinz set out to gather impartial customer feedback – on its existing products, on new products, and on its competitors’ products.

An advert in The Westmorland Gazette asking people if they would like to be paid for eating understandably captured the public’s imagination.

But not everyone is cut out to be a taster.

“First of all we find out what people like, and what they don’t like. We need to know if they smoke (light smokers only need apply), obviously if they are available (there are panels nearly every day of the week and tasters work on a rota system), and whether or not they have any medical problems which might affect their ability to taste.”

Potential tasters have also to be able to describe colours – so being colour-blind counts you out – and to distinguish odours.

Then there is a basic taste test using low-level sugar, salt, quinine (bitter) and citric acid (sour) solutions.

“We also have to establish if people can describe things. We want to know why they like something, to see if they have an opinion and are able to qualify it.”

Based on your score at the end of all of the above you will either qualify as a ‘preference’ tester (making straight choices between what you like and what you don’t like), or continue on to the next stage of questioning to become a ‘profiler’.

“The profiling test has the same elements as the preference test but you have to be able to distinguish the intensity of flavours, and to put things in the order of intensity. We might do that by giving someone a range of cheeses to try, from mild through to Gorgonzola strength.”

Then there’s the ‘triangle’ test where two foods are the same and one is different, and ‘descriptive’ tests too.

“The other thing that’s important is personality,” Liz added. “You have to have people who can listen to other people’s point of view but can put across their own view, even if they are in the minority.”

As an analyst, it is Liz’s job, and that of sensory panel leader Rozenn Henaff, who has trained in sensory science, to prepare the tests for the taste panels. Such has been their success in gathering feedback, that they have now been enlisted to test products not only for Heinz UK, but also for Heinz Europe.

Among those products will be Heinz icons such as its tomato ketchup and tomato soup. But the taste team at Kendal was also drafted in to give its verdict on the new Heinz soup-in-a-cup range which was launched into supermarkets just a couple of months ago.

The taste tests are carried out in a specially-designed room in which each member of the tasting panel is assigned their own cubicle – a little claustrophobic I thought, but it certainly helps you focus on the task in hand.

Each item for tasting is passed through a small opening in the front of the cubicle and responses are documented on an eye-level touch-screen computer, although there is a keyboard too for more detailed comments.

Sometimes, if it is important that the taster doesn’t pre-judge a food based on its colour, on goes the infra-red light.

I rather messed up on that one … guessing the contents of the cup to be some sort of herbal tea rather than dried basil. Mind you, I did pass the boiled sweet test – bright red but tasting of orange.

And so it would seem that getting ‘paid to eat’ might sound like heaven, but when there’s a fortune resting on the ‘menu’, only tastebuds in tip-top condition will be invited to step up to the plate.

If yours are lucky enough to make the grade, then you are in for a fascinating feast.

There’s one thing for sure, you’ll never take tomato sauce for granted again!