Factors Determining Product Experience - Essay Example

Schifferstein and Hekkert point out that the determination of an adult’s food experience can be done by inquiring of the cultural experience or ethnicity. Odors' experience varies depending on cultural factors. For example, wintergreen is perceived as candy odor in the United States while the perception in the UK is quite different, whose experience of the same product is medicinal. Preference and experience of food products determine taste, which can be explained by the Korean food product known as Kimchi. Kimchi is widely accepted in most parts of Korea. However, Europeans and Americans do not accept Kimchi because it tastes salty and sour.

Religions and moral taboos are also some of the cultural experiences influencing the taste and preference of food. Muslims, Jews, Indians, and a few African tribes do not accept certain foods because of cultural experience. Dietary avoidance is common in those religions. Muslims and Jews do not eat pork while eating beef in India is viewed as taboo. Taste and smell are chemical experiences because completion of sensory experience happens only after chemical contact with cells in the body. Food contents are dissolved in the saliva and come into contact with the tongue. The tongue is a sensory organ that contains taste buds that convert chemical compounds in food to neural impulses, which relay information to the brain regarding the food tasted (Nevid, 2007).

The brain does the interpretation of the impulses transmitted from the receptors. This is done to give meaning to stimuli. Generated impulses travel through neural pathways to the spinal cord and brain. The brain relays impulses to the right place for stimuli perception. The taste buds receive chemical inputs from food as mentioned. Taste buds have neurons connected to them, which combine together forming nerves traveling to the medulla through the brainstem and conveying information to the thalamus. However, culture and experience influence tastes as mentioned. Foodstuffs such as iguanas are less valued in the United States making them unavailable in most restaurants while populations in Central America eat an iguana because of experience since their ancestors used to eat wild iguana. Taste can also be affected by learning developed at an early age. For example, the foodstuff a breastfeeding mother eats changes the taste of a child in later life (Weiten, 2012).

Odor is converted to smell by the olfactory epithelium which contains odor receptors that are stimulated on breathing in air. According to the lock-and-key theory, odor molecules excite olfactory receptors. The theory states that the odor molecules excite olfactory receptors in the olfactory epithelium. The cells in the epithelium convert odor to neural impulses on excitement. The impulses travel to the olfactory bulb of the brain through the olfactory nerve. The information is then passed to the limbic system and cortex. The limbic system processes emotional and motivational activities. Emotional reactions are common on encountering certain smells (Pastorino & Doyle-Portillo, 2012).