Sweet Liking Status and PROP Taster Status impact emotional response to sweetened beverage

Abstract

Humans are innately predisposed to enjoy sweetness. However, excessive sugar consumption has been linked to a range of health issues. In order to develop an effective strategy to provide customised products and promote healthy eating, it is important to understand individual variation in sweetness preference. This study investigated how both Sweet Liking Status and PROP Taster Status impact on liking and emotional response to an ice tea product varying in sweetness intensity. One hundred and seventy five consumers were invited to rate liking and sweetness intensity of 5 sucrose solutions and emotional response, liking and sweetness intensity of ice tea samples varying in sweetness concentration (Low, Medium and High), and with sugar type (Sucrose and sweetener).Cluster analysis followed by validation test within each cluster group has identified 34% High Sweet Likers (HSL), 16% Medium Sweet Likers (MSL), 35% Low Sweet Likers (LSL) and 15% Unclassified group (UN). LSL had an overall heightened sweetness sensitivity than HSL for the sucrose solutions. For ice tea samples, no significant differences on liking and emotional response were observed between the two types of sugar, indicating consumers have a high acceptability when using sweetener as a sugar substitute in beverages. Overall, liking and positive emotions were rated more intensely for the Medium sweetened ice tea, whereas the opposite was found for the Low sweetened ice tea. A significant Sweet Liking Status*Concentration interaction was observed, where for High sweetened ice tea, LSL significantly disliked the sample and associated with lower positive and higher negative emotions, but an opposite trend was observed for HSL. For ideal sweetness, LSL indicated a significant lower ideal sweetness level in ice tea than HSL. Unlike Sweet Liking Status, an overall PROP Taster Status effect on both liking and emotional response was observed, but the effect was found to be independent of sweetness levels. A relative effect of Sweet Liking Status and PROP Taster Status on emotional response was also observed, where the effect of Sweet Liking Status was more pronounced in both pST and pNT group.

Individual Differences in Sweetness Ratings and Cross-Modal Aroma-Taste Interactions

“…Previous studies on the association between sweet liker status and sweetness intensity ratings are conflicting. As in this study, some studies have found that sweet dislikers generally rate sweetness intensity higher than sweet likers [61,66,67]. This might indicate that sweet dislikers perceive the same sucrose concentrations as more intense than sweet likers, and therefore do not like them.…”

“…Another important factor to keep in mind is the food matrix. As described previously, the matrix for example affects whether sweet dislikers rate sweetness intensity higher than sweet likers or not [61,67]. In the present study, water was used as a model system.…”

“…Differences might possibly be due to different methods used. Indeed, both Methven et al [67] and Yang et al [61] found their results to be dependent on matrix. Methven et al [67] found that sweet dislikers rated sweetness intensity higher than sweet likers in jelly, but not in orange juice, while Yang et al [61] found that low sweet likers (sweet dislikers) generally rated sweetness intensity of sucrose solutions higher than other groups, while this was not the case in iced tea.…”

“…Tuorila et al [60] also found gender differences in the responses to sweetness. However, these referred to differences dependent on nationality and age, whereas others have found that there were no significant associations between gender and sweet liker/disliker status [4,61]. According to Deglaire et al [32] a difference between males and females in their preference for sweet taste might possibly be due to different levels of health consciousness, as females have been shown to have higher health-related nutrition knowledge [62] and to find healthy eating more important than males [63][64][65].…”

Effects of Sweet-Liking on Body Composition Depend on Age and Lifestyle: A Challenge to the Simple Sweet-Liking—Obesity Hypothesis

“…To better understand reasons for these conflicting reports, a critical consideration is the classification methods used to identify distinct sweet-liking patterns (i.e., sweet-liking phenotypes). Research in the UK [44,45], the US [31], and Korea [46] have all found evidence that liking for sweet taste can be separated into three distinct and definable phenotypes: those expressing strong liking to high levels of sweetness (sweet likers; SLs), those who have aversive responses to strong sweet tastes (sweet dislikers; SDs), and a third group exhibiting maximum liking for a moderate concentration of sucrose [47]. Prior to this emerging consensus, there was a major lack of agreement in criteria used to identify these patterns of hedonic responses across studies [47], leading to an overly simplistic dichotic classification (SLs versus SDs) which failed to adequately describe the full range of human behavioural responses to sweetness.…”