Launch of Fifth Sense partnership with FlavorActiV

We’re delighted to announce details of an exciting partnership with FlavorActiV, the world’s leading sensory training and taster management company.

FlavorActiV consists of a highly-skilled team of professional taste trainers who use the company’s flavours and sensory tools to train, analyse and support tasting panels across the global beverage industry. In simple terms, they take ‘average’ tasters and turn them into consistent, reliable tasters through targeted training.

The hope is that they will be able to use these skills to support Fifth Sense members to recognise and re-learn tasting abilities.

FlavorActiV deliver the ‘Taste, Train Enjoy’ workshop at the 2015 Fifth Sense conference

To give an idea of the background to this, an important area of our work is around educating people on the distinction between smell and taste, and how the two combine to create flavour. Part of that involves helping people who have suffered olfactory loss become aware that this doesn’t necessarily mean complete loss of taste.

This draws directly on the experiences of Fifth Sense Founder Duncan Boak and other Fifth Sense members who have learned to appreciate the nuances of their ability to perceive basic tastes – sweet, sour, salt, bitter and umami – and utilise this when cooking and enjoying food and drink.

We believe that the partnership with FlavorActiV gives us a great opportunity to help many people become better aware of their own tasting ability and learn to appreciate what they can still detect, as opposed to focusing on what they are missing out on. It is going to be a learning experience for both parties, of course; as far as we are aware, no-one has ever tried to develop any sort of taste training for people who have suffered olfactory loss before.

Fifth Sense members at the ‘Taste, Train, Enjoy’ workshop

We are incredibly excited about the opportunities afforded by the partnership.  FlavorActiV are running a pilot study in early 2016 with a group of Fifth Sense members who volunteered at our annual conference in November and we are looking forward to sharing news on further developments in due course.

To read more about the partnership and 2016 pilot study visit
http://www.flavoractiv.com/about/fifth-sense

To read FlavorActiV’s open letter to Fifth Sense members click here