A Taste of the Science of Eating: Insights from the Science of Smelling and Tasting

Why do you taste what you taste, and what about smelling? Many books address good food, but few go deeper, explaining the processes behind smelling and tasting. The book addresses the senses of smell and taste and the many more senses and their interactions during eating. It also stresses the importance of psychology when you smell, taste and eat.

Some of the other topics include flavour, the working of the nose and olfactory (cross-)adaptation, the use of odorants, the relation between emotion and eating, and many more. The book helps you understand why you like and eat food, and shows the intriguing complexity of the area.

Garmt Dijksterhuis studied experimental psychology and methodology at the University of Utrecht and wrote his PhD dissertation at the department of Data Theory at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. He has written or co-authored some 150 publications in sensory and consumer science, statistics and psychology. He is one of the founders of the Sensometric society and is a member of the editorial board of several journals in the area of eating and food perception.

He has over thirty year experience in sensory science and experimental psychology and worked in academia, research institutes and in the food industry. He has done research on a variety of topics including multisensory perception, consumer (food) choice, sensory science and sensometrics.

Garmt taught courses in food perception, sensory science and related topics and has been a visiting scientist at several universities and research institutes. He is an invited speaker at many scientific conferences as well as at meetings for a more general audience and has been a guest in several podcasts and in interviews by the media.

Currently Garmt is teaching at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience of Maastricht University in the Netherlands.