How sweet is too sweet? Measuring sweet taste preferences and liking in familiar and unfamiliar foods amongst Dutch consumers

Abstract

Sweet taste preference and liking have been assessed with various methods, yet there is no consensus in the literature on which method is most sensitive across a range of foods. The current studies explored several methods to assess sweet taste preference, liking and perceived intensity across various familiar and unfamiliar foods in Dutch consumers. In experiment 1, five different sweet foods, each with five sweetness concentration levels were evaluated on preference, liking and perceived intensity, using two methods for measuring liking and preference: ranking (n = 10), rating (n = 10); one for measuring perceived intensity: rating (n = 10); and one combining preference, liking and perceived intensity: structured napping (n = 10). The ranking method, despite having the highest discriminative power, gave no indication of inter-sample spacing nor absolute scores. In subsequent studies, ranking was thus combined with rating as “Ranking on a scale” (RoS). Experiments 2 (N = 31), 3 (N = 28) and 4 (N = 28) tested the RoS method across various familiar and unfamiliar foods and/or food forms. In Experiments 2 and 4, inverted-U-shaped hedonic responses were observed for all foods, and differences in preference for different sweetness concentration levels were detected. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that familiar foods were more liked than unfamiliar ones across all sweetness levels (Experiment 3 (F(1,1322) = 14.8, p <.001); Experiment 4 (F(1,803) = 38.1, p <.001)). Hence, RoS seems to be a viable method for assessing sweet taste preferences in both familiar and unfamiliar foods, among consumers. In future work we will apply this method to better understand the role of sweet taste exposure on preferences for a range of sweet foods.