We all know that our senses play a big role in how we perceive food. Think about the last food you ate – the sound of biting into it, how it felt on your tongue, the aroma that made you want to keep eating, and, of course, how it tasted. Food is a holistic sensory experience. So it makes sense to approach it in a way that takes all the senses into account. Today, chefs and food product developers are working to improve plant-based foods, moving them from mediocre to acceptable to downright delicious—and the best and brightest among them are using the science of sensory perception to get to a whole new level of delicious and craveable. Welcome to The Science of Senses – a platform by Motif FoodWorks that’s all about exploring how science can enhance our sensory experiences with food.

Yes! Here’s a simple experiment. Get a pack of multi-flavor jellybeans. Close your eyes and hold your nose closed. Ask someone to select a jellybean for you, and put it in your mouth. Start chewing with your nose tightly closed. You may not be able to even identify the flavor of the jellybean. Now unplug your nose and keep chewing. You should instantly be able to recognize the flavor more easily. That’s just one example of how your senses work together to make food more enjoyable.

Whether driven by health reasons, care for the planet, or simply a desire to consume less meat, more people are eating plant-based foods than ever. But much of the time, they still have to make tradeoffs when it comes to taste, texture and performance. Research shows consumers are dissatisfied with existing plant-based alternatives and are hungry for more satisfying—even craveable—options.

To solve this problem, science is being applied to make better tasting, more nutritious plant-based foods. At Motif FoodWorks, we recognize that traditional solutions haven’t worked so we combine different scientific disciplines in new ways to unravel food’s ‘satisfaction secrets,’ leading to game-changing discoveries.

Motif FoodWorks is a food technology company. Our goal is to unleash the promise of plant-based foods by helping to make them better tasting, more nutritious and so desirable that people will actually crave them. We are pioneering a holistic approach that combines proprietary insights and technology with our exclusive network of partners in novel ways to get new, better answers to making plant-based foods.

Our goal is simple. We help make plant-based foods that people crave. The key to unlocking their full potential is to rewrite food design rules. We unravel food's secrets by exploring how individual ingredients work together, focusing on important sensory experiences that drive consumer enjoyment.The result is more nutritious, better tasting plant-based food.

We’d love to hear from you! Please submit an inquiry on our Contact page and we will be in touch soon.