Change in Taste Sensitivity to Sucrose Due to Physical Fatigue

Abstract

Many athletes experience a change in taste sensitivity due to physical fatigue. Nutrition is an important factor during training and recovery. Previous reports have described the ideal alimentation for athletes, however, the alimentation appropriate for physical fatigue has not been investigated. As a part of gustation research aimed at formulating an ideal alimentation for fatigue, we investigated the relationship between fatigue and taste sensitivity to sweet substances. Athletes were asked to perform a half marathon to induce physical fatigue. We used a triangle test to determine the detection threshold for sucrose solutions before and after running. The results revealed that the threshold decreased after the half marathon. Thus, we confirmed that taste sensitivity to sweetness increased as a consequence of physical fatigue. To avoid either a lack or excess in nutrient intake during post-exercise physical fatigue, an alimentation regime that takes into consideration this change in taste sense is necessary.

Influence of Prolonged Exercise on Sweet Taste Perception

“…As fatigue is caused by a decrease in blood glucose levels (Coyle et al 1986), it is possible that this decrease may be responsible for changes in sensitivity to sweet taste. Moreover, the effects of physical activity on taste sensitivity are supported by the report that the detection threshold for sucrose solutions changed before and after the half-marathon (Narukawa et al 2009).…”

Effect of Physical Exercise on Taste Perceptions: A Systematic Review

“…From the 5699 titles screened, 88 were approved based on their title, 49 were assessed using the full text, and 18 were analyzed and included in this systematic review. From the 18 studies, 17 had an experimental design, including non-defined [18], nonrandomized control trials [16,17,[19][20][21][22][23][24][26][27][28]30,32,33], and randomized control trials [25,31]. One case control study [29] was also included.…”

“…The studies originated from Canada [33], China [29], Ireland [32], Israel [21,22], Japan [18,19,23,26,28], the Netherlands [25], New Zealand [30], Norway [31], the United States of America [16,17,24,27], and the United Kingdom [20]. Most of the studies were conducted on healthy normal-weight males and females, but some studies included participants who were obese [31], clinically ill [29], or athletic [16,24,26,27].…”

“…Most of the exercise interventions were treadmill or ergometer sessions based on the maximal oxygen uptake [19,20,23,31,33] and/or calculated/predicted maximal heart rate [19,[23][24][25]30]. Other interventions included organized sports [21,22], circuit stations [21,27], a half marathon [26], hiking [28], or questionnaires on physical activity levels [16,17,29,32]. In most cases, the subjects were trained in a controlled environment [18][19][20][23][24][25]27,30,31,33]; however, some participants trained outdoors [21,22,26,28] and/or were assessed on self-claimed activity specifications [16,17,29,32].…”

“…Most of the protocols used solutions with a predetermined quantity of ingredients, with salty [17,19,21,22,24,27,29,30,32,33], sweet [16,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][30][31][32][33], and bitter [18,19,27,32] as the most common tastes evaluated. Three studies used food with varying concentrations of salt, sugar, and/or fat for the taste evaluation [17,21,22], and one study used the Leeds Food Preference Questionnaire paired with images of food with varying energetic content and taste characteristics for taste evaluation [31].…”