Abstract

Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is considered to be a contributor to diabetes and the epidemic of obesity in many countries. The popularity of non-caloric carbonated soft drinks as an alternative to SSBs may be a factor in reducing the health risks associated with SSBs consumption. This study focuses on the perceptual discrimination of SSBs from artificially sweetened beverages (ASBs). Fifty-five college students rated 14 commercially available carbonated soft drinks in terms of sweetness and likeability. They were also asked to recognize, if the drinks contained sugar or a non-caloric artificial sweetener. Overall, participants showed poor accuracy in discriminating drinks’ sweeteners, with significantly lower accuracy for SSBs than ASBs. Interestingly, we found a dissociation between sweetener recognition and drink pleasantness. In fact, in spite of a chance-level discrimination accuracy of SSBs, their taste was systematically preferred to the taste of non-caloric beverages. Our findings support the idea that hedonic value of carbonated soft drinks is dissociable from its identification and that the activation of the pleasure system seems not to require explicit recognition of the sweetener contained in the soft drink. We hypothesize that preference for carbonated soft drinks containing sugar over non-caloric alternatives might be modulated by metabolic factors that are independent from conscious and rational consumers’ choices.

Highlights

  • The regular consumption of carbonated soft drinks is a very common habit worldwide (Basu et al, 2013)

  • We investigated the relationship between sweetener detectability, hedonic value, and sweetness in 14 commercially available carbonated soft drinks

  • Results indicate that participants systematically preferred beverages sweetened with sugar and that they rated them as sweeter than beverages sweetened with noncaloric artificial sweeteners

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Summary

Introduction

The regular consumption of carbonated soft drinks is a very common habit worldwide (Basu et al, 2013). There is evidence that the regular consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) poses a serious public health risk (Malik et al, 2006). Longitudinal studies indicate that subjects who consume an average of one can of a sugar-containing beverage per day have a significantly higher risk of death post-heart attack (De Koning et al, 2012). Artificially-sweetened beverages (ASBs), referred to as non-nutritive sweetened beverages, have become a popular alternative to SSBs in the soft drink market. In 2014, four of the 10 most consumed carbonated soft drinks in the USA were ASBs, occupying 26.6% of the

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