How trained food tasters help us make food the world loves
Human data machines
Many would agree, the idea of sampling Gushers, snacking on Nature Valley granola bars and trying out the newest flavor of Yoplait yogurt sounds like the kind of thing you’d do for free.
But as it turns out, the job of a food taster is more technical than it sounds.
General Mills employs food tasters who sample our products for a living, and these trained professionals provide data about our food that no machine could ever replicate.
“Eating is a very complex experience. Your taste, your salivary flow, your teeth – all of that plays a role."
According to Terese Tamminen, senior scientist in our Innovation, Technology and Quality group, these “human data machines” provide analysis on our products that is essential to understanding how consumers experience our food.
And it plays a key role in achieving our mission to Serve the World by Making Food The World Loves.
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“Eating is a very complex experience. Your taste, your salivary flow, your teeth – all of that plays a role,” says Tamminen. “Our panelists take references from scales and they translate them to flavor and texture to give us ratings on what the experience is like while eating and into the aftertaste.”
It goes far beyond a simple matter of preference; these food tasting panelists have such a finely-tuned ability to taste that they can tease out even very mild flavors in products, or capture the difference between small changes to a product’s recipe.
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And our food tasters play an integral role in helping General Mills evaluate our products and understand precisely what consumers experience when they eat our foods.
Becoming a General Mills food taster
To get equipped for this kind of analysis, food tasters go through a rigorous training to develop the skills and acumen needed.
This summer, Sue Tomlinson, descriptive analysis panel leader, has been training a new group of food panelists.
