Meet Sensory Scientist Alex Maxwell

Joining Highlight's research team

Now as a member of the Highlight Customer Enablement team, Alex is using his sensory powers to help our customers build products people love.

With Alex officially on the team, we couldn’t help but wonder: what brought him to sensory science?

Chelsea Stone, Senior Manager of Digital & Content Marketing: Why don’t we start from the beginning. How did you know that sensory science was your calling?

Alex Maxwell, Senior Research Manager: I grew up in rural America, doing 4-H and FFA (The National FFA Organization, a.k.a. Future Farmers of America). That's where I learned how to navigate my way through a kitchen.

“It was really important to my parents that my sister and I understand
that food doesn't just appear out of nowhere, and that there's a lot of
hard work involved.”

I have so many memories of my family and I cranking out different things in the kitchen all summer long. In the fall, we knew that we were going to make applesauce. We knew how good it tasted to have fresh apples that we cooked on the stove, pureed and then put into jars.

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We raised beef cattle as well. My sister and I showed cattle. And every year we’d process one for eating. To this day, I still get fresh beef from my parents.

So growing up, we had a very good connection to our food. It was a priority for our family to have farm-raised fresh beef and really good, homegrown canned produce. That has translated to my everyday. I can’t imagine a world without my garden.

When I got to high school, I attended a 4-H summer camp at Kansas State on bakery science that became my first venture into the realm of food science. It was the first moment I thought, “I think this is what I want to do.”

I've always loved the whole science piece. When you're growing up in rural America, there's really only three careers to choose from, and this path was very different. It combined my love of the land with science in a way that stretched me and challenged me. And so that's how I got into food science.

Defining food and sensory science

Chelsea: How would you define “food science”?
Alex: Food science is an umbrella term for the scientific discipline that includes chemistry, physics, and engineering as they apply to food. In college I actually started as pre-med because it was an easy way to get all of those science credits, but I had a bit more fun than the Biology majors. For example I took Organic Chemistry, but then I also took Flavor Chemistry, which is basically applied Organic Chemistry.

Chelsea: Have you ever encountered any misconceptions about sensory science specifically?
Alex: Sometimes it feels like [sensory scientists] are the redheaded stepchildren of food science, because you have your engineers, your physicists, and your chemists—all "ancient" sciences—but sensory science was only developed in the 1950s because of the Space Race. NASA had to create food that could enable people to survive in space, but it also had to taste good. They experimented with removing all the moisture from a food, rehydrating it, and studying the changes—this was early sensory science.

“The sensory science field is full of people who really care about
making good products.”

Sensory science and market research

Chelsea: How should product developers use sensory science and market research together?
Alex: Sensory science is first and foremost a science. There’s a rigor to it. On the other hand, market research is heavily legal (take claims substantiation, for example). Both disciplines use checks and balances, but we’re governed by different systems.

For example, a sensory scientist might know how to max out the fat content to hit that dopamine receptor and elicit a response, but we also know that consumers are looking for more heart-healthy options with lower sugar content, and it’s our job to create something that meets these standards.

“I love working on nutritionally-backed products because it has
consistently been at the forefront of innovation.”

When I was working on yogurt, consumers were looking for higher protein content—but protein doesn't taste good. So for us, the challenge became: how do we make protein palatable for a consumer so that they are getting the functional benefit of protein, but they also actually want to consume it?

This kind of consumer has a taste tolerance for things that I or the average consumer absolutely do not have a tolerance for. But these consumer groups and so many others in the health and wellness space are fun groups to develop products for.

Cocktails, seasonality, and sensory science

Chelsea: Okay last section. What do you love about cocktails?
Alex: The artistry, the taste, and the flavors. It's such a world unto itself. You could have a lifelong hobby of exploring new cocktails and always be discovering new things.

“I think of cocktail ingredients like levers that you can push up and
down to change the overall experience of a drink.”

Chelsea: What are your favorite cocktails, especially for the season we're in right now?
Alex: I think gin is the perfect year round spirit base because it is so versatile, but it also has a flavor to it. I love the botanicals, and depending on what style of gin you get, you can ramp up the botanical notes or floral notes, or stick with a more classic juniper flavor. I even recently tried a cocktail with a nori-infused gin that was so surprising and brought some savory, umami flavors that made my taste buds work overtime.

Conclusion

Alex Maxwell is a food scientist currently living in St. Louis, Missouri. You can find him supporting Highlight’s customers in their research to build better products, tending to his vegetable garden, or sipping a shaken daiquiri at Kenny’s (IYKYK).