Aversive textures and their role in food rejection

Abstract

Texture is a prominent feature in foods and consequently can be the reason a food is accepted or rejected. However, other sensory attributes, such as flavor/taste, aroma, sound, and appearance may also lead to the rejection of food and motivations other than unpleasantness exist in unacceptance. To date, these motivations for food rejection have been studied in isolation and their relationships with psychological factors have not been tested. This study measured reasons people reject a food and probed into the specifics of texture rejection. A large U.S. sample (N = 473) was asked to rate their motivations for rejecting a food, list foods that were disliked due to unpleasant sensory attributes, specify the unpleasant sensory attribute(s), and complete an assessment of general touch sensitivity. Results showed 94% of individuals reject a food due to its texture, a rate comparable to flavor-based rejection. Looking at the number of foods being rejected, flavor was the most common food attribute, followed by texture and then aroma. From a linguistic standpoint, aversive textures encompass a large vocabulary, larger than liked textures, and the same food may be rejected due to a single or combination of texture terms. Viscosity (e.g., slimy) and hardness (e.g., mushy) are the most common aversive texture types, but through cluster analysis subsets of individuals were identified that are more aversive to other textures. This study emphasizes the role of aversive textures in food rejection and provides many avenues for future investigations.

Subjective touch sensitivity leads to behavioral shifts in oral food texture sensitivity and awareness

“…In this study, we show that subjective touch sensitivity differences exist within a non-clinical population and have behavioral implications. Similar to our past study 25 , we show subjective touch sensitivity generalizes to other senses involved in eating (e.g. appearance, flavor) rather than being specific to touch related attributes (food texture).…”

“…Here, high and low touch sensitivity individuals used different sensory strategies for each food, and these were not specific to texture. Similar to our past study 25 , subjective touch sensitivity generalizes to other senses in food perception. In atypical populations, this generalization is commonly observed 20 , 21 as traits are considered innate and not learned through perceptual experience 41 – 44 .…”

“…These studies clearly show that subjective and behavioral sensory sensitives can lead to changes in liking of food. Previously we showed that subjective touch sensitivity increased motivations to reject a food and these motivations may not be specific to the sensation of touch, but generalize to several sensations experienced during eating such as smell and taste 25 . However, our conclusions were based on subjective behavioral reports of rejection.…”

“…Individuals were separated into high and low touch sensitivity groups prior to participating in the main part of the study using the touch sensitivity subscale of the Sensory Perception Quotient (SPQ). The SPQ was developed for adults with and without autism 21 and the touch sensitivity subscale correlates with sensory-affective motives and behaviors related to food rejection in neurotypical adults 25 .…”

Unravelling the unravelled : Microfibrillated cellulose as texture modifier in liquid and semi-solid foods

“…However, liquids thickened with XG have been described as adhesive (Ong et al, 2018b), slimy (Gössinger et al, 2018) and sticky (Yamagata et al, 2012). Sliminess and stickiness are generally disliked sensory attributes in liquid foods (Pellegrino & Luckett, 2020;Saluja & Stevenson, 2019), which calls for the use of alternative thickeners.…”