Academic Consortium Publications for March 2025

Our March Paper-of-the-Month pick is a peer-reviewed publication that considers pickle producers pondering pickling picklers in less salt for health reasons. To not blunder, a pickle producer must wonder: “Will sales trickle if pickle patrons are fickle?” because here too, Taste is King! To answer this question, Rubia Selmira Lassen, Voltaire Sant'Anna, Fernanda Leal Leães, Tarcísio Lima Filho, and Amanda Dupas de Matos consider ingestion. Does pickling in brine and in verjuice at different salty concentrations affect (1) the consumer rejection threshold, (2) the compromised acceptance threshold, and (3) the hedonic rejection threshold? After hedonic responses from Brazilian consumers were collected, the data were subjected to analyses to learn the effects. The authors concluded it would be possible to switch the acidifier from vinegar to verjuice and decrease the salt concentrations to produce a healthier low-sodium yet still-pleasing pickle, but the possibility cannot be excluded that a low-sodium pickle would not tickle the appetites of consumers in all markets outside of Brazil. While letting these ideas steep, you may with your eyes peep the pickle paper and other not-pickle-related publications from the Compusense Academic Consortium, which we have preserved here to be relished.