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Food Safety Matters
Ep. 180. Dr. Carolyn Ross: Where Sensory Science Meets Food Safety and Quality
00:44:29
Carolyn Ross, Ph.D., M.Sc. is a Professor in the School of Food Science at Washington State University (WSU), Affiliate Professor in the WSU School of Medicine, and Director of the WSU Sensory Science Center. Since starting at WSU in 2004, Dr. Ross...
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A
Foreign.
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B
Hello everyone and welcome to Food Safety Matters, the podcast for food safety professionals. I'm Stacy Acheson, publisher of Food Safety magazine. And as usual, I'm joined by my co host, Adrienne Blum, our editorial director, and Bob Ferguson, president of Strategic consulting. So welcome podcasters, all of you.
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A
Hi, st.
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B
Yes. So October's been a really busy month here on the podcast, and we've had our two regular episodes plus two special bonus episodes this month. The first bonus episode was Adrian's interview with Dr. Emilio Esteban and Sandra Eskin, undersecretary and Deputy Undersecretaries for Food Safety in the Office of Food Safety at usda and also who oversee the Food Safety and Inspection Service fsis. They discussed the proposed salmonella framework for raw poultry products. So that's an ongoing issue and comment period continues to go on for that. It's a great interview. Also, Adrian's discussion with Dr. Lone Jesperson about the importance of assessment in, in promoting continuous improvement in food safety culture. Again, great interviews. And so if you already follow or subscribe to the podcast, these are in your feed and life is easy and you could just go back and listen, catch up. But if not, you've got two more reasons to smash that subscribe or follow button in the player of your choice. And then you can make sure that you just don't miss out on any of our great content. So all kinds of reasons. Stay in touch. Keep up. Come on, guys.
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A
Sounds like solid advice to me.
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B
I know. I don't mean to chide you. I'm just trying to have some fun. We want you, you know, lots of great stuff here for you. So. So, Adrienne, what do we have lined up for today's episode?
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C
Yeah, so today I'm talking with Dr. Carolyn Ross, who's the director of the Sensory Science center in the School of Food Science at Washington State University. And we are going to discuss innovative analytical and sensory techniques to to understand the physical and chemical properties of food and wine, including technologies that can help assure food safety and quality. So stay tuned to find out what Dr. Ross has going on in her lab.
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B
Okay, so then with absolutely no ado, let's just do some news.
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C
Yeah, so diving right into the news here. Under its newly reorganized Human Foods Program, the FDA is introducing an enhanced systematic process for the post market assessment of chemicals in food, which it discussed during an extensive public meeting that they held on September 25th. So, in response to a fast moving wave of state legislation targeting additives and ingredients of public concern, which has been A topic of continuing discussion on the podcast. As you probably remember from listening to previous episodes, FDA mentioned it just a couple. Yeah, we have talked about it just a little bit.
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B
Yeah, here and there, sprinkle there.
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C
So fda, in line with this, is increasing its oversight of substances that are being used by food manufacturers. So as discussed at this public meeting, the developing review process will encompass generally recognized as safe or grass substances, color additives, substances used in food contact materials, and unintentionally added chemicals such as environmental contaminants. Not included in the scope of the post market review process are chemicals implicated in foodborne illness outbreaks. So since some post market assessments will be more complex than others, the review process will be divided into two types of assessments, focused and comprehensive. Now, for all chemicals, FDA will begin the process with a three part review, including food chemical signal monitoring, through scientific, medical and press reports and social media. And then they'll hold a triage to determine the need for a post market assessment and then a fit for purpose decision on whether a focused assessment or a comprehensive assessment is needed. So focused assessments will be limited in scope, they'll comprise four parts and they'll be conducted by FDA without a formal peer review. This will allow them to be conducted fairly quickly in around four months to a year. Comprehensive assessments will be more complex and resource intensive and could take years to complete. They will be segmented into six parts and require peer review. And risk communication will be a critical part of that process. So FDA welcomes public comments on the proposed post market chemical review process, including specific input on several elements of the process. Comments on the process can be submitted through December 6th of this year. And to find out how to submit comments to FDA and to read more about the steps comprising each type of review process, please check out the story link in the show notes.
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A
Well, this seems to be a pretty good development to me, putting a process in place to review both unintentional contaminants and intentionally added ingredients just like the ones which we hinted to a second ago that we've been discussing in the state regulations and elsewhere in the process. They focus on whether the contaminant or ingredient will present a reasonable certainty of no harm. And they use that phrase which I see as addressing the toxicology risk management review that we talk about all the time. Part of this I also see as missing in the state legislative acts because they're just naming it, but there's not really a lot of evidence of that sort of review and that having the FDA and their toxicologists do this seemed like the right thing for me. They also deal with unintentional contaminants and intentionally added ingredients separate, which I also think makes sense as there are two different issues. There's one thing about having a very, very minute amount of a contaminant versus something like red dye number whatever, and intentionally adding it when it doesn't need to be there. So I see those as completely different issues. And the assessments will be done by subject matters in subject matter experts inside and external to fda. And they also have a provision to commission additional research where needed to close knowledge gaps, which you've also talked about here on the POD several times, that there are places where it's just not known so they can commission that research. So it looks to me to be the basis for a reasonably good process. So it sounds, sounds like they're on the right track to me.
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B
Well, it does sound like a good process. I think that a very comprehensive approach. Right. I guess troubling still is the, are the time frames right for the. The first, you know, about four months to a year. Four months sounds pretty good. You start to get into a year, then you get into. Could take years to complete. Like there's really no commitment there. So I'm very glad. I understand these take lots of resources and expertise. But again, the languishing of this thing and having it just drag on and on and on where people have questions, right. About the safety of something and. And they have to wait years for answers while consuming the products. That's just a little bit interesting.
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A
So the one instance, and I think with any one of the contaminants or intentional ingredients, you know, there could be other, other consequences. I can't think of it. The reason why I'm sort of having a hard time doing this is I can't think of an example. But there may be an ingredient that has some question that they need to research but also contributes to the stability or some other positive attribute to the food. And if you just say, well, we're going to take a look at that and ban it now, if it clearly comes across that there's evidence of reasonable harm, to use that same phrase, then it makes sense that they could do that. Maybe we're just without that product for a while. But imagine a product that really contributes to the safety or quality of the product. Let's say it's something that's antimicrobial. You're like, wait a second. We can either take that out and introduce another risk or leave it in until we know better. There's probably a lot of that that they deal with as well. So it's not, there's not unintended consequences with this? There could be, yeah.
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C
So we will continue to report on that and as FDA gathers comments from folks, if they make any adjustments to this process, we'll be sure to report on that for you in our news and discuss on the podcast. So now moving to state legislative movements, California has done it again, passing first of its kind food safety regulations in the US so recently signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. California Assembly Bill 660 standardizes the use of best if used by and use by dates on food labels. It also outlaws the use of sell by dates marking the country's first mandatory food date labeling reforms. So under the California law, beginning July 1st of 2026, companies selling food products in California must only use best if used by to indicate the date by which a product will reach its peak quality. The term used by should only be used to indicate the date by which a product's safety can no longer be guaranteed. The use of consumer facing sell by dates will be prohibited so that consumers don't confuse sellers sell by dates with quality or safety dates. Also, the use of any other ambiguous or inconsistent phrases like expires on and freshest buy will also be eliminated. So Assembly Bill 660 allows retailers to display packed on labels on prepared food items, but they must also display the mandatory used by or best if used by dates described in the law. So I have to say that this is one piece of legislation from California that as a consumer I really like because I personally often find the terminology confusing around quality dates on labels and because I'm pretty paranoid about food going bad, this means that I probably end up throwing away food that's perfectly safe to eat. And we do know that food waste is a big problem in our industry and particularly in the U.S. so Bob, I know you mentioned before that this legislation has both pros and cons. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
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A
So first off, I agree with you 100% with what you just said at the end there. I love the idea of standardization labels, standardization of the meetings meanings, even being in food safety, I don't always remember what these, what these labels mean. So it's, it's great to know exactly what's what and it makes a lot of sense. I agree with you 100%, Adrian, what you said about food waste, because one of the things that jumped out for me was the 30 day limit on shelf life. I mean, sometimes when I Cook. I use things like packaged egg whites and they're pasteurized and if in the carton in the refrigerator they expiration dates measured in months. So I don't know why they would put a 30 day limit on this. Well, it turns out. So I started to read the legislation, dig around a little bit. It turns out that the legislation has a number of exclusions and limitations. It does not apply to infant formula and egg products, both of which are regulated by the USDA and both have their own label requirements that I'm assuming the reason why they're excluded is that California can't change federal requirements. They can add to them, but they can't change the requirements. So those have specific labels that the usda, usda, beer and shellfish, to some extent, it's a little complicated. Are also excluded. I have no idea why they're excluded, but they are. The 30 day limit also does not apply to frozen foods or foods that are kept frozen. So there's a handful of things here that are out. But the law doesn't require a label where a label is not otherwise required. In other words, if you put a label on there, it has to conform to California regulations. If under California or federal regulations you're not required to put a label on, then you don't have to add a label that says anything that's not already there. So there's going to still be a bit of a patchwork quilt in California because of this. But I still think it's going to really standardize what this means. And I also think it'll probably like most things that California does because of the size of the state, start to spread across the US and become more standardization all across all of our foods.
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B
You can thank us later. Bob, when you were saying about California can't legislate, can't change federal, I almost interrupted and said, shh, don't tell California.
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A
Yeah, they haven't really gotten that memo yet.
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C
Don't tell.
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Well, I'm just glad because it is confusing and the sell by. I'm with you. That one was just like this doesn't help me at all because you know. And now what? Okay, I bought it in time and then you know, but that's when I guess, you know, oh, our sensory factories, what do you call it? Sensory olfactory olfactories come into to play, to help us. So maybe Dr. Ross will have a thing or two to help us about that.
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C
She will have something to say about that actually in the interview. So that's quite relevant. Yeah, so, yeah, so we'll continue to watch this, see how this affects the rest of the nation as well if it does. And I think this is certainly a very interesting piece of legislation from California which has been setting records with this sort of thing. So we'll continue to watch what California does and continue to report on it for y'.
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All.
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And so, moving now to compliance with regulations, a study from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst caught our eye recently. And that study described the cost for small and mid sized food companies of complying with FDA's preventive controls for Human Food rule. The researchers found that compliance with the preventive controls rule can cost small and medium sized businesses an average of $22,000 in the first year and approximately $8,000 for every year after that to maintain the necessary systems. So compliance with the preventive controls rule is mandatory for all large food companies. But for businesses qualifying as small, very small, or meeting sales criteria to be considered midsize, some exceptions for compliance are available. However, FDA still encourages all businesses to meet full preventive control standards and all companies must still comply with current good manufacturing practices and HACCP along with local and state regulations. So even if a business is exempt, its downstream supply chain partners may request that it fully meet preventive controls requirements for the purposes of third party certification. Now, the study researchers suggested that small and mid sized businesses can successfully plan, implement and manage systems to comply with the preventive controls rule with the help of training interventions such as PCQI qualification. The researchers also suggested that food safety educators address economic realities in training materials that could be currently limited to food safety topics. So, interesting study.
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A
Well, this is, it is a fascinating study. And there was something about that $20,000 number that jarred my memory a little bit. It sounded really familiar. Well, it turns out in a magazine called Food Safety Magazine, we've all heard of Food Safety Magazine, we have.
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B
Where do you get that?
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A
Food-safety.com I think you can get that.
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B
There you go. I think that's right. Yeah.
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A
Remember the dash? It's the dashboard.
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B
That's right, yeah.
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A
In the October, November 2018 Food Safety Insights, we asked processors. Now this is early on in FSMA when they had what the University of Massachusetts would say would be their first year compliance. We asked them to estimate their cost for FSMA compliance, not specifically the preventative controls rule, but for that period of time, we're probably talking about roughly the same thing. 60% of them said that their costs were under 50,000, with somewhat more than half of those saying that their costs were under 20,000. I like that number. We also saw a real correlation between the compliance cost and the size of the company. More so than we did, for example, with the type of product they were packaging. So if you sort of take small and mid term and mid sized companies, the small ones were under 20,000, the mid sized ones were between 20,000 and 50,000 of cut those. And in that article we essentially said that their first year compliance costs were going to be plus or minus 20,000, depending upon the size of the company. Now the one thing I will be really fair to UMass is in the survey we did in that article, 85% of the companies said that they weren't yet tracking any cost. They did say that they had to hire employees and they were looking at software. They listed a lot of things that, that were elements of the cost. But one person said it's mandatory. So why do we even need to track the cost? We just have to do it. The difference here I see with what UMass did is now these processors have six years of experience and they not only not only saw their actual cost and went back and took a look at them, but now they see their ongoing cost. So it's good to see what we saw in 2018 was indeed accurate. And UMass somewhat confirmed that. And that looks to be a very solid number.
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Well, compliance and education and the education that goes along with compliance is very important. Important and you learn and implement a lot of things. I heard just as a reminder at our Food Safety summit this year in 2024, we were very lucky to have the Preventive Controls for human food version 2.0, a pilot course conducted by Kathy Gombas with FSPCA. Kathy's also an independent consultant, also. Oh, a editorial advisory board member of Food Safety magazine just happens to be. But anecdotally Kathy was sharing with me how some of the some participants, you know, learned some things during the course that help them, you know, not just comply, but really also ensure the safety of their products and they learn some things. So this type of education, well, yes, there's cost to it and I know that for small companies that can be significant. But making sure that your products are safe, you know, that can be an existential crisis. We're going to be offering the same the course now that is officially it's not a pilot anymore. It's gone through the process. So Kathy will again be giving teaching that course in 2025. So keep your eye open for information about the summit for 2025. That'll be May 12th through the 15th and that will be one of the certification courses that we offer. Very, very happy to be working with FSPCA and Kathy on that.
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C
Yeah, thanks, Stacy. So, now moving to international news, the European Food Safety Authority, or efsa, has published new guidance on the submission of novel food applications, which will come into effect in February of next year. So this guidance applies to all novel food applications, including cell based foods and ingredients. This updated guidance reflects changes in the EU's legal framework for novel foods, which was originally implemented in 2018, and considers the latest advances in food research and innovation, as well as the growing variety of novel food applications. The revised guidance explains how to describe and identify novel foods, along with providing details on the production process, composition specifications and proposed uses. Applicants will also need to provide information on the food's expected consumption, history of use and safety data, including how the body processes the food, toxicology, nutrition and potential allergens. Guidance for preparing and submitting an application for a novel food is also included in the update. EFSA wants each risk assessment to be completed within a nine month window, but assessments can be paused or extended if more information is required from the applicant.
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A
With all the novel foods that are being proposed, this seems like a pretty, pretty good idea as well. Again, there's a lot of things that we've never seen before coming to market.
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B
Yes, indeed.
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C
Yeah. And so, before we go, we have one more news item to share with you. We have a cool scientific development that we want to tell you about. So, researchers from Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan have developed a monoclonal antibody that can identify Campylobacter jejune and, and inhibit its growth. So this antibody reacts to qcrc, which is a multiprotein complex expressed in pathogenic Campylobacter, which not only functions as a highly reliable indicator of the pathogen, but it also acts to suppress qcrc. So this multiprotein plays a big part in energy production for Campylobacter jejuni, which means that the antibody has the potential to spread, slow the bacteria's growth and decrease its pathogenicity, the researchers believe that the antibody could be an important step toward preventing, diagnosing and treating infections caused by Campylobacter jejune. By providing the basis for a rapid detection system, medical treatments, and even a potential vaccine. So very, very interesting science happening in that area.
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B
Yeah, that's very cool.
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A
Yeah, I was going to say the exact same thing, Adrian. You described this as cool, and that's exactly what, what it is. I mean, using monoclonal antibodies to detect something is not a new technology, but using it to as a treatment for someone that's infected. That's, that's pretty interesting. That'll be interesting to see where that goes.
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B
Yeah. So as always, there are links to all the articles that we've referenced. You'll find those in our show notes and if you don't already, we invite you to follow us on LinkedIn X or Facebook. Just search for Food Safety magazine. And to take a deeper dive into all the great content that we offer, just visit the aforementioned website food safety.com and now it's time for Adrienne's interview with Dr. Carolyn Ross, professor in the School of Food Science at Washington State University, affiliate professor in the WSU School of Medicine and Director of the WSU Sensory Science Center. Since starting at WSU in 2004, Dr. Ross has established her lab and the WSU Sensory Science center as a center for graduate student training in the areas of sensory science and analytical chemistry. Specifically, the Overall objectives of Dr. Ross Research and graduate education program are to understand the theoretical basis underpinning the sensory perception of foods and wines and correlate these attributes with quantifiable characteristics. Dr. Ross has also expanded her research to explore food texture perception and in children. She has been awarded the Institute of Food Technologists Tanner Award three times for most cited article in the Journal of Food Science, and that would be in their Sensory and food quality section. Dr. Ross was also awarded the WSU Faculty Excellence Award for Instruction and is a Fulbright Australia Scholar at Deakin University in Melbourne. She holds a PhD in Food Science, Environmental Toxicology from Michigan State University and a Master's degree in Food Science from the University University of Guelph. And without any break at all, we're going to get to that interview.
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C
So, Dr. Ross, so happy to have you on the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today.
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D
Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. I'm excited for this conversation.
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C
Yeah. And I know we have a lot of very interesting things to talk about. And you know, first off, I guess let's just talk about, you know, you head Washington State University's Sensory Science center, which conducts research in five major areas, and one of those is innovative analytical and sensory techniques to understand the physical and chemical properties of foods and wine. So this area also encompasses technologies that can be employed in the areas of food safety and quality. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about what you're working on there.
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D
Sure. We've got a lot of projects on the go, so we've got a research facing piece and then we have client based work as well. So from a research perspective, I'm very interested in food texture right now and looking at food texture perception across specific populations, specifically older adults and then children with intellectual and developmental delays. And so for our older adults, we're interested in looking at maintaining their food texture through their lifetime because it does inspire them to eat more foods. It makes the food more interesting, more social. So we're looking at ways that we can prepare new foods that maintain that food texture variety but still address their, their eating capabilities because those do change over their lifetime. And then for working with our children with intellectual developmental delays, that includes conditions such as down syndrome, aut spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, just to name a few, we're looking at increasing their texture varieties. So for this population, they have a few more problems with textures at that young age. And so what is a way that we can build up skills and confidence for them to increase their texture variety over their lifespans? So that's a lot of the work around textures for specifically for food products. Right now we're looking at mozzarella cheese and we're looking at different ways of preparing it and then looking at the final functional properties. How does it melt? Because mozzarel, mozzarella cheese is obviously very important for pizza. So we want to make sure we keep up with those functional properties. And then we're also getting into some packaging research. So we're looking at the effect of packaging type, composition, shape and, and storage condition on the quality of milk over time. And that'll include some 3D printing. So we're looking forward to that.
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C
That's so interesting. And you know, actually just as a side question with the packaging research that you're doing right now at your lab, are you looking at all about kind of the, the things that the packaging is containing as far as food contact materials or food contact chemicals? Because I know, you know, you're seeing a lot of interest and you know, legislation emerging around this from the states. And so I'm just curious if that's one of the elements you're examining with that within that research.
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D
It is and it makes it very tricky because not only are we looking for food safe materials, a material so that it doesn't leak, because we are looking at packaging milk, but we're looking at the chemical safety as well as in micro particulates and, and those plastic compounds. So absolutely, that's feeding into our decision making process. We're looking at sustainable packaging as well. So there's again, there's a Lot of parameters that we're trying to look at at the same time for that work.
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C
Okay, interesting. And I know another thing that you have looked at at your lab is a very interesting piece of technology called the E tongue. And I know that that can be used for certain food safety and quality assessments. And I'm curious about what kinds of trials or research that your lab has been is conducted with the E tongue. So maybe tell us a little bit about what that is, you know, for the listeners who aren't familiar.
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D
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we bought that in 2012. So I've had it for a few years now. We were one of the early adopters of it. So what the ETONG does is it looks at non volatile compounds. So those compounds that may be associated with some taste, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, spicy, metallic. So not the aroma compounds that the eat that the E nose looks at, rather it looks at those non volatile compounds. So we've been looking at that from a food quality standpoint. We just don't have the capacity in our lab to do any microbe testing. So for food safety, it's more the chemical food safety side of things rather than the microbial food safety side of things. But we've applied it for a lot of different products and compounds that can be problematic with fatigue. So compounds such as spicy compounds, your sensory panelists can only try so many before they get fatigued. So we've been looking at its application for those kinds of things. Again, spicy compounds, bitter compounds is another big one because we do get fatigued with bitter bitterness. And so what is a way, is it a good predictor of the outcome of intensity of bitterness? We've looked at it for sweeteners, looking at non nutritive sweeteners compared to sucrose, for example, and looking at whether we can have combinations of various different types of sweeteners that mimic more closely the sweetness that's provided by sucrose. And then a big thing has been pharmaceuticals. So obviously with pharmaceuticals, human subject testing can be quite tricky. And most active or a lot of active ingredients within pharmaceuticals are bitter. And so what a lot of research is looking at is what are ways that we can, that people can disguise the bitter compounds in a pharmaceutical so that they have higher compliance. And so that's one of the great applications for the ETONG is to be able to analyze say the pure bitter compound and you have a certain response. And then if you add different compounds that block the bitterness, the further it moves away from the bitterness. In the plot, the, the Less it is like that. So that's another great application as well. And then fortified foods. So we've been looking at incorporating amino acids into various fortified foods, but that confers a little bit of bitterness and metallic notes as well. So this has been a great, a great use for that as a way of narrowing down the samples that go forward to sensory, not removing sensory, because of course we can't do that, but it can help red number of samples that move forward for sensory testing.
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C
Interesting. That's a wider variety of different foods and products than I thought it could be used for. And I think one thing you didn't mention, but I think your lab has possibly done some testing and trials for is the Etong with wine. Is that correct?
- [30:44]
D
Yes. Yeah, that's where a lot of our research has been. I just forgot to mention that. Yeah. So we've been looking at it across red and white wines for a series of different traits. But most recently we were looking at detecting wine fault development in red and white wines and then comparing the response of the Etong to the trained sensory evaluation panel and seeing, well, can the ETUNG predict a fault earlier than sensory evaluation can?
- [31:10]
C
That's so interesting. And you know, what do you think that, you know, the sensory evaluations that are offered by the ETUNG could offer, for example, like the wine industry or other types of, you know, food categories, you know, companies that make these types of foods. And are you aware of this technology being used by any commercial enterprises?
- [31:33]
D
I'm not aware of it being used extensively. It's really sort of at that research phase right now. It's very useful for, for providing a library or background library of a given, of a given category of foods. So the way that the Etang works that you can look at the individual responses of the seven different sensors, but generally it's the combination all of those sensors together. So it's a holistic response. And so if we have, if we're building up a library where we've got samples of Riesling and we pull them, we have them over, you know, every vintage year from different, different wineries or from different growing regions, what we can do is build up a library to see again, build up some confidence intervals around what we would expect to see for a given sample. And so it does again, it provides that holistic response. You can look at individual responses as well, but really I think that the more power for me is just that overall response of the Etong to a given product.
- [32:31]
C
That's so interesting. And you know, the other thing that You. So you mentioned that the ETONG could detect. Could better and more easily detect fault in wine than a human sensory panel. So are we talking about, like, microbial spoilage or what kinds of faults are we talking about that the ITEN would be helpful in, you know, discerning?
- [32:52]
D
Yeah, for that work, we were looking at microbial spoilage. So we were looking. We were taking. We inoculated the samples at day zero. We had a control sample that we did not inoculate with any microorganisms. And then what we did was we compared the response of that control to those various microorganisms at the same periods of time so we could see how the product compared to the control over time. And then we had our panelists smell the samples. They didn't taste them, they just. Just smelled those samples, and we gathered their data from them. And so what we're able to see is how the. We were able to see the progress and the changes of that faulted sample over time.
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C
So interesting. Okay, and so has your lab looked into any other, like, artificial sensory technologies, such as the E nodes, which I think you mentioned briefly before, for application in either food safety and quality or other applications?
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D
We have not. I thought about it, but we have a GC Ms. So for me, that was. That covered that volatile analysis piece. So I didn't. I have not jumped in on the ENOS technology, but it's somewhat similar in that you get that holistic response, but then you also get individual responses as well. But, yeah, we don't use that.
- [34:00]
C
It is interesting reading about it, though, all of these different sensory technologies and how they've, you know, just the technology that goes into making them, you know, able to mimic, you know, human perception. So, yeah, this is super interesting stuff. So what other technologies at the crossroads of food safety and quality and sensory experience excite you and, you know, like, what kinds of other food groups or food applications do you think could benefit from the future application of analytical and sensory technologies?
- [34:30]
D
Well, I've got a lot of thoughts on this. One of them is, of course, AI that's at the top of everyone's mind and with the understanding, of course, we have to understand what we're trying to predict from AI, but I just think that there's so many diverse data sources of data, and when you look at how much information we can collect from individuals or panelists, are we making the most of it? And it can be hard to do that with traditional methods of data analysis. So I think AI opens up that opportunity. So understanding and gathering More information about the individual data themselves, being able to collect data from different diverse sources. So open comments or from speech, and putting that all into the model as well as some of those analytical measures. So being able to account for all of as many analytical measures as you could possibly think of and putting that into a model and seeing what it does predict. So I think that's really interesting because it's using all the data that you can. And I think, again, that there's a lot of data that we leave out there, or we use it, we include it in the model, but maybe not in the complex way that we can as we move forward with AI technology. And then another thing that's alongside that perhaps is I'm very interested in how we eat things. So as food scientists, we're. We're very worried about the food, which I get, of course, and then we, you know, pop it in our mouth and then we're worried about the nutritional aspect of it and then all of those other things. But there's the actual eating process, the oral processing. There's certainly research that's going on in that area, but I think that there could certainly be more. What are the individual variations in eating? I mean, other than saliva, other. The saliva flow rate and chewing rate, there's all these other inputs that we could collect that could help predict perception. And so I find the actual eating process very interesting.
- [36:21]
C
Yeah, and, you know, you hear interesting things about perception. Like, you know, I've always wondered, why does cilantro taste like soap for some people? Like, it's hard for me to wrap my head around because cilantro tastes like cilantro to me. But then. And there's some people that have whatever it is that, you know, that thing where it makes a certain type of food taste different. And people report, you know, a small subset of people report it tasting like something that it is not supposed to in quotes, you know, it's supposed to taste like. And I think that's incredibly interesting.
- [36:52]
D
I do, too.
- [36:53]
B
I think.
- [36:53]
D
And you know, super tasters as well use that term in quotes. So the ability to tape, to taste propyl thioacil and how that can change your perception. And are you perceiving it differently or are you describing it differently? And that I find very interesting is where are we. Am I perceiving it the same as you, but we're just using different words, or are we actually perceived legitimately perceiving it differently, which is often the case. And then we're using. We're using different words because of that. So I find that all super interesting and being able to gather the reasons as to why or where we're seeing those differences are going to be important.
- [37:30]
C
Important, yes, absolutely. Now we've talked about your work in the lab, but this year you're also teaching courses at WSU on the instrumental and sensory analysis of food as well as food chemistry. So I'm curious, how does your work in the classroom help prepare students for careers in food science, food safety, quality assurance and other related areas?
- [37:54]
D
Yeah, I like to combine research areas. So we used to have a food analysis course which was discreetly different from the sensory evaluation course. And what I did several years ago is I combined those into one big course and now we're splitting them to two separate courses, but the course will still have sensory evaluation and analytical or instrumental analysis in the same course. For me, it's really important to have the students understand that these things can build off each other and support each other and they're not siloed because I think when they're taught as completely separate courses is students tend to think of them as completely separate things and it can be harder kind of bringing that knowledge together. So I bring a lot of that combination of theoretical experience or theoretical knowledge through the lectures along with the practical experience is what we do in labs. As far as that goes. I bring in a lot of examples of what I've seen as far as client based research goes, what we've seen within research as well. Collecting data, comparing the data that we've collected to historical data or to past research data, as always interesting. Always important to bring statistics in. Somehow statistics got sort of associated with sensory. And so I like to have it in all the courses that I teach. Because you're working with numbers, you're going to use statistics for whatever data set you're using. It's not just for sensory, it's for food chemistry as well and food analysis too.
- [39:14]
C
And you know. So you were also a Fulbright scholar at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia last year and you worked on food texture perception in children with developmental diseases. Just delays. So this is a little outside the area of food safety, but I'm sure that our listeners would be interested to hear how your work at Deakin helped push the boundaries of the field of sensory science and what applications you see for this research in the food and beverage industry.
- [39:40]
D
Sure, yeah. It's really been an area that's been very under researched. So IDDs, intellectual developmental delays, they're present in about one in six children in the United States and within that population, about 80% of those children have feeding difficulties. So really it's quite a substantial problem that we need to address. And so I approach this as a food scientist. So always like, well, what are the children already eating and what are those sensory properties that those foods have that they are having success eating? Once we understand that, then we can kind of work backwards once, you know, starting with the food working backwards. And so I have done a large home use test study that was in the US Before I went there. But what it really highlighted was just the interdisciplinary nature of this research and that includes all the other expertise that we need to have involved. So the eating part, the oral processing, speech and language, pathologists, pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, physicians. So then that's what the research in Australia was, is that I fielded a survey with practitioners and clinicians working with that population in feeding and then asked them a whole series of questions about what kind of decisions did they make, what went into their decision making when they were developing recommendations for the family. And so we did the survey, that same survey in the United States as well. And so we're still writing up those results. But what we're finding is that it builds on the home use test work that we did. It builds on what the parents have also said anecdotally. So we're finding dissolvable and crispy foods are easy texture for the children. So, so to answer your next, your other question is how do we build on that so we can take that information? And I'm proposing a developing a stepped system for food. So much like they have for baby food right now for semi solids, they have like sauces that they stir and increase texture challenges. If we have something like that for solid foods where they start with a texture that's easier for them, like dissolvable and crispy, and then they gain experience and confidence with that. They gain the oral processing skills, they move up to more and more texture challenges. They can move up toward the leafy combination textures which, you know, we see with vegetables and other, more, more nutrition, more nutrient dense foods. So that, that's the idea, is that it can start them on their texture journey.
- [41:59]
C
Well, it's certainly important research and I, I love that, you know, the, what you're proposing about the kind of the graded system of, you know, incorporating different textures so that children with developmental delays might be able to eat easier and more comfortably. So that's, that's really, that's really cool and very interesting research. Now I wanted to circle back really quickly to something we talked about at the very beginning of this interview, because I'm interested in it. The researcher lab is doing right now on the packaging for milk. Just a quick ending question. So the research that you are doing on that right now, can you tell us anything about what you're finding with that research and also how the results of that research might be applied?
- [42:40]
D
Oh, all good questions. We're really early days, so my graduate student just started on it in August, so we're still very much at the the information gathering stage. So we're trying to figure out even what packaging materials we can print in 3D and even narrowing down the packaging materials too. If it's not, if we can't put milk in it, if it leaks, then we can't use it. So we're really very, very early days, but just gathering information.
- [43:05]
C
Okay, got it. All right, well, thanks for, thanks for clarifying that and good luck on the research project. And Dr. Ross, I really appreciate you being on the podcast with us today to share all of this really interesting information about what your lab is doing and all the work you, you're involved with and that you have been involved with. And I am very personally excited to hear what you do next. So we'll definitely stay in touch and we'll be following your work. So thank you so much for taking the time. It's been a pleasure talking with you.
- [43:31]
D
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
- [43:34]
B
Thanks again to Dr. Carolyn Ross for joining us on the podcast today. And of course, thanks to all of you for listening. You know that we love hearing from you, so never hesitate to send a US questions or suggestions to podcastood-safety.com or post a note on LinkedIn X or Facebook. We always like getting your feedback. And to make sure that new and bonus episodes magically appear in your podcast player, all you have to do is click that Follow or Subscribe button in the player of your choice and presto, all the episodes are there. The regular and bonus episodes don't miss out. And while you're there, please throw some stars our way by rating the pop podcast, especially if you liked it. It only takes a moment and it's good for everyone. And that's it for us today. Our next regular episode will post on November 12th. In the meantime, take good care of yourselves and those around you. We'll talk to you then.