John Prescott, PhD

I am director of TasteMatters Research & Consulting, and author of Taste Matters. Why We Like The Foods We Do (Reaktion Books, London). I was trained in experimental psychology and have worked in food perceptions and preferences for 25 years at universities and research centres in Australia and New Zealand.

Since 2005, I have been Editor of Food Quality and Preference, the leading journal for sensory/consumer science, and am also a member of the executive editorial board of Chemosensory Perception. I have authored 80+ journal articles and 20 book chapters on topics including cross-cultural taste preferences, perception of pungency, the genetics of taste perception, and flavour perception and preference.

I am also a visiting professor at the University of Florence, Italy, and an Associate Fellow at the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight (Singapore)


Biographical Highlights


Some recent publications


Selected recent invited conference presentations & lectures
  • Questione Di Gusto Festival della Scienza, Genova, Italy, October 28 - Nov 3, 2013
  • Why we like the foods we do The Science of Taste symposium, Copenhagen, August 11–12, 2014
  • The development of flavor perception & preference. European Chemosensory Research Organisation conference, 10–14 September, 2014, Dijon, France
  • Taste Phenotypes: An update Australasian Association for Chemosensory Science conference, 3–5 December, 2014, Brisbane, Australia


See a more complete profile on LinkedIn or my publications on Google Scholar, ResearchID or ResearchGate