Development of Chemical Sensing System for Quantifying Deliciousness

人的味觉“美味”受多种因素的影响，如质地、颜色、温度等。各种物理传感器可以量化纹理或颜色。但到目前为止，还没有化学传感器能够量化味觉或嗅觉。在本研究中，我们尝试使用多通道味觉传感器来测量“美味”。多通道味觉传感器是由多种脂质/聚合物膜组成，用于将味觉物质信息转化为电信号。通过测量膜电位的变化，研究了脂质膜对各种味道物质的响应。通过研究热处理、均质处理和脂肪成分对牛奶味道变化的影响，将多通道味觉传感器应用于牛奶。指出这些因素对牛奶的风味有很大影响。传感器输出与丰富度和蛋白质变性程度高度相关。在均质处理方面，传感器表现出比人类更高的识别能力。用味觉传感器测定了几种牛奶的脂肪成分。这些结果表明，利用多通道味觉传感器进行食品美味度定量研究是成功的。

The human taste sensation "deliciousness" is affected by various factors, texture, color, temperature, etc. Various physical sensor can quantify texture or color. But no chemical sensor has been able to quantify taste or odor senses so far.In this study, we tried to measure "deliciousness" using multichannel taste sensor. A multichannel taste sensor is composed of several kind of lipid/polimer membranes for transforming information about taste substances into electric signals. Responses of the lipid membranes to various kinds of taste substances were investigated by measuring changes of membrane potentialsA multichannel taste sensor was applied to milk by focusing on the taste variance caused by heat treatment, homogenization treatment and fatty component. It was pointed out that these factors considerably affect the deliciousness of milk. The sensor output showed high correlations with richness and the degree of protein denaturation. As for the homogenization treatment, the sensor showed higher discrimination ability than humans. The fatty component of several kinds of milk was also measured using the taste sensor. These results imply that study of quantification of deliciousness of foodstuffs was successfully made using the multichannel taste sensor.