Variation in orosensation and liking of sampled foods with thermal tasting phenotype

Gary J Pickering,Nicole J Gaudette,Sarah Lucas

doi:10.1186/s13411-016-0049-1

Abstract

Flavour is a key driver of liking, purchase behaviour and consumption of food and beverages. Determining how individuals differ in their perception of flavour is important to fully understanding dietary choices and habitual diet-related health outcomes. Thermal tasting—the capacity to experience a phantom taste when small areas of the tongue are rapidly heated or cooled—associates with greater orosensory acuity for tastants in aqueous solutions. This study sought to extend this finding and establish whether thermal-taster status also associates with the perceived intensities of oral sensations elicited by sampled food. Twenty-five thermal tasters (TTs) and 19 thermal non-tasters (TnTs) scored liking (generalized degree of liking scale) and the intensity (generalized visual analogue scale) of the dominant orosensations elicited by 20 food and beverage items in duplicate using a randomized complete block design. Multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed that overall, TTs rated the intensity of orosensory food groups higher than did TnTs, although this was significant only for foods that were predominantly bitter-eliciting (ANOVA). Overall liking scores approached significance (MANOVA) but differed between TTs and TnTs only for the grainy orosensory food grouping (ANOVA). These findings are discussed in the context of diet-related health outcomes and directions for further research concerned with taste phenotypes, flavour perception and consumption behaviours.

Highlights

Flavour is a key driver of liking, purchase behaviour and consumption of food and beverages
Thermal tasting is a taste phenotype with a likely genetic basis first noted by the Green lab in 2000 [7]; there have only been sporadic reports appearing in the literature since
Orosensation While there was an overall effect of taster status (TTS), a significantly more limited range of food items varied with the phenotype than we expected, given the heightened intensity experienced by TTs for a wide range of orosensations reported in simple aqueous solutions [8, 9, 11, 12], wine [14] and beer [15]

Summary

Introduction

Flavour is a key driver of liking, purchase behaviour and consumption of food and beverages. Determining how individuals differ in their perception of flavour is important to fully understanding dietary choices and habitual diet-related health outcomes. Thermal tasting—the capacity to experience a phantom taste when small areas of the tongue are rapidly heated or cooled—associates with greater orosensory acuity for tastants in aqueous solutions. This study sought to extend this finding and establish whether thermal-taster status associates with the perceived intensities of oral sensations elicited by sampled food. Differences between individuals in their perception of orosensory (taste and chemesthetic) stimuli can influence habitual food intake and thereby risk of habitual diet-related disease [2]. The specific sensations elicited include sourness, sweetness, saltiness, bitterness and metallic, and vary with the area stimulated and the temperature regime used (i.e. heating or cooling). Of particular interest is the association between thermal taste status and perception of food and food-relevant stimuli

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