Abstract
Seeking to promote healthy food options through design, this study investigates whether food saltiness perception can be enhanced through the design of the surface texture of the container from which the product is sampled, using 3D-printing. An experimental study was conducted at a supermarket in which shoppers (N = 270) participated in a taste test. A full-factorial 3 (surface texture: smooth, rough, rough and irregular) × 3 (salt content: low, medium and high salt content) between-subject design was employed. Participants in each condition were asked to try the product and assess saltiness perception, taste intensity, taste liking and willingness to try. Results testify to the feasibility of enhancing saltiness impressions through both rough and irregular 3D-printed surface textures, but only for the medium-salt and high-salt variants. Findings on taste liking and willingness to try likewise testify to the importance of considering the interaction between surface texture and saltiness. These findings qualify previous research on cross-modal correspondences by showing that applications of surface textures may backfire when the gap between expectations triggered by tactile sensations and actual food contents becomes too large. Implications for initiatives aimed at promoting healthy food choices are discussed.
Highlights
Dietary sodium intake may vary across populations, most populations around the world con sume more than twice the recommended daily amount of sodium
Consumer selection and consumption of salty food options is partly motivated by a ‘health-pleasure trade off’ which reflects the belief that healthy foods and beverages are less tasty than their unhealthy, full-salt, counterparts
Most studies so far align with the notion of cross-modal correspondence by showing that expectations generated in one modal ity transfer to another, in aforementioned study (Van Rompay & Groothedde, 2019), surface texture design did not influence saltiness evaluation of zero-salt chips
Summary
Dietary sodium intake (commonly referred to as salt) may vary across populations, most populations around the world con sume more than twice the recommended daily amount of sodium (i.e., salt; Kloss, Meyer, Graeve, & Vetter, 2015). When at the supermarket, consumers feel that they are faced with a choice between healthy and tasty, and too often (at least from a health promotion perspective) ‘tasty’ prevails (Raghunathan, Naylor, & Hoyer, 2006; Jo & Jayson, 2018). In addition to such hard wired heuristics, and of particular relevance to the present undertaking, consumers readily experience reduced-salt foods and beverages as bland or tasteless (Stein, Cowart, & Beauchamp, 2012). A third (complementary) strategy, which is receiving increasing attention in recent years, seeks to enhance tastiness of healthy food options through design factors of food packaging (e.g., Tijssen, Zandstra, de Graaf, & Jager, 2017; Van Rompay, van Hoof, Rorink, & Folsche, 2019), and tableware (e.g., sample cups and plates; see Van Rompay & Fennis [2019] for a review)
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