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Associations between food neophobia and responsiveness to “warning” chemosensory sensations in food products in a large population sample
Abstract
The aim of the present study is to explore the association between food neophobia and chemosensory responsiveness and to determine whether this association translates into different food liking and preference patterns. Data were collected on 1225 respondents (61% females, age 20-60 years) as part of the Italian Taste project. Respondents completed the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) as well as a food preference and familiarity questionnaire for a number of foods and beverages categorized as mild or strong tasting. Moreover, they evaluated attribute intensity and liking of an actual food (dark chocolate pudding) varying in the level of sweetness, bitterness and astringency. Taste function was evaluated by measuring fungiform papillae density (FPD), responsiveness to PROP (6-n- propylthiouracil) and to water solutions representing various oro-sensory qualities.
High, medium and low neophobic subjects did not differ for FPD and chemosensory responsiveness. Reported liking was significantly lower for high neophobics than low neophobics only for those vegetables and beverages characterized by high levels of warning stimuli (i.e. bitterness, sourness, astringency and alcohol), whereas almost no differences were found for the bland versions of food items. High and medium neophobics rated astringency and, to a lesser extent, bitterness of the dark chocolate pudding, as more intense than low neophobics and liked the most bitter and astringent variants significantly less than low neophobics.
Differences in liking, however, do not seem to be mediated by food neophobics’ superior taste functioning but rather by higher levels of arousal when eating food and/or drinking beverages that are perceived as potentially unpleasant and dangerous. Finally, the effect of food neophobia was evident not only for potentially unusual items in the Italian food context, but even for items that might be considered highly familiar.
... Bitter tastes, in particular, are aversive, because of their innate capacity, along with pungency (e.g. hot spices) and astringency, to act as 'warning' signals for the presence of toxins in plants [42], as well as through learned associations with negative emotional states such as hostility and threat [43]. While we often learn to like bitter foods/beverages-coffee and beer are obvious examples-this is always in the context of the developing preference for the other tastes, odours or flavours that are present. ...
... Consistent with Berlyne's description of the relationship between complexity and hedonics, foods that are made more complex by adding flavours or spices are liked less by high FN individuals [68]. Stimulus intensity is another source of arousal generally and, unsurprisingly, high FN individuals tend to show dislike for strongly flavoured, but otherwise innocuous foods, including familiar vegetables and beverages [42]. ...
... Heightened intensity for bitterness, astringency and pungency has been reported for high FN individuals [42,72], while a recent study has shown that those low in several arousal-related personality traits (including FN and disgust sensitivity) rated all sensations in model foods (e.g. samples of chocolate pudding spiked with sucrose at different concentrations) as less intense than did those scoring higher [54]. ...
Across sensory systems, several stimulus collative characteristics, including intensity, novelty, complexity and perceived dangerousness, are known to elicit high levels of physiological and psychological arousal. It has become apparent that food rejections by both children and adults are frequently linked to such arousal-inducing characteristics. This paper examines how arousal and arousability are important elements in responding to stimuli generally, but specifically to foods, ultimately influencing food preferences and choices. It is clear that responses to sensory properties are subject not just to variations in perceptual sensitivity due to genetics or experience—as in the case of widely rejected qualities such as bitterness or pungency—but also to the arousal potential of those stimuli. Moreover, this is linked to various enduring aspects of personality, suggesting that the impact of arousal on food choices is merely one aspect of a more general sensory sensitivity. The impact of diet on various health outcomes underlines the importance of understanding the relationship of arousal to food choices.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Sensing and feeling: an integrative approach to sensory processing and emotional experience’.
... The association between food neophobia and reduced preference and intake of many food products (including vegetables) has been demonstrated both in adults (Jaeger et al., 2017;Knaapila et al., 2011;Törnwall et al., 2014) and children (Kral, 2018). Individuals higher in food neophobia (neophobics) are reported to like fewer vegetables, beverages, fruits, and spicy foods than those low in food neophobia (neophilics) especially if these foods are high in warning sensations such as bitterness, astringency, sourness, and pungency (De Toffoli et al., 2019a;Laureati et al., 2018;Törnwall et al., 2014;Spinelli et al 2018). Furthermore, heightened sensory sensitivity was observed in neophobic individuals , Prescott et al., 2022. ...
... Food neophobia (FN), which denotes the apprehension or reluctance to consume new or unfamiliar foods, was assessed using the 10-statement scale developed by Pliner and Hobden (1992) and validated in Italian by Laureati et al. (2018). The individual food neophobia scores were obtained by summing up the ratings given to the 10 statements, with the neophilic items being reversed. ...
... No difference in PROP bitterness perception was found among clusters. Results on associations between responsiveness to PROP and vegetable preference and consumption are conflicting, with some recent studies showing a lack of association of bitter vegetable preference with responsiveness to PROP (Gajari et al., 2022;De Toffoli et al., 2019b;Laureati et al., 2018) while other providing evidence of such a relationship (Duffy et al., 2020;Mezzavilla et al., 2019). The relatively low correlation between the perception of PROP and the perception of the other oral sensations Nolden et al., 2020) might at least in part account for the inconsistency of the results on association between responsiveness to PROP and perception and intake of bitter vegetables. ...
... However, since a negative attitude towards new foods exists in neophobia (44)(45)(46)(47) , food neophobia may be considered a barrier to familiarity. Most studies, except two (48,49) , supported this by indicating a negative association between food neophobia and familiarity with many food items (45,(50)(51)(52)(53)(54)(55)(56)(57)(58) . Pliner and Hobden (2) reported that the negative relationship between food neophobia and familiarity with foods was limited to unfamiliar foods only. ...
... Food neophobia was negatively associated with liking many food items, particularly strong-tasting (39,49) and unfamiliar/novel foods (47,48,73,74) in children and adolescents (33,(37)(38)(39)42,50,(75)(76)(77)(78)(79)(80)(81)(82) and in adults (5,18,40,(47)(48)(49)57,69,73,79,(83)(84)(85) . In large-scale research (n 8906) including eight different studies conducted in five countries, food neophobia was inversely associated with the liking of the majority of the 219 considered food and beverage items (73) . ...
... Food neophobia was negatively associated with liking many food items, particularly strong-tasting (39,49) and unfamiliar/novel foods (47,48,73,74) in children and adolescents (33,(37)(38)(39)42,50,(75)(76)(77)(78)(79)(80)(81)(82) and in adults (5,18,40,(47)(48)(49)57,69,73,79,(83)(84)(85) . In large-scale research (n 8906) including eight different studies conducted in five countries, food neophobia was inversely associated with the liking of the majority of the 219 considered food and beverage items (73) . ...
Food neophobia is defined as the unwillingness to taste new foods and the avoidance of unfamiliar foods. This eating behaviour is a complex issue, and both genetic and environmental factors play a role in it. The aim of this review is to understand its relationships with dietary behaviours throughout the life span and to examine the impact of interventions on food neophobia. A literature search was performed using the PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and ScienceDirect databases. As a result of the screening, a total of 139 studies, 17 of which were intervention studies, were included in this review. According to current evidence, food neophobia is negatively associated with the acceptance of not only novel/unfamiliar foods but also familiar foods. Many studies have shown that food neophobia is negatively associated with the hedonics and consumption of core foods, especially vegetables and fruits. Individuals with higher levels of food neophobia are less familiar with many foods, but familiarity is a prominent motivator in food choices for these individuals. Therefore, it may be considered a barrier limiting diet quality and this trend is similar for both children and adults. However, food neophobia is not an unchangeable personality trait. Intervention studies have pointed out that educational programs and food-related activities that increase familiarity and exposure to foods and create positive attitudes toward and positive experiences with foods can reduce food neophobia. The results highlight that people with high food neophobia need more support to improve their diets and the quality of dietary behaviour.
... Such a suggestion does not necessarily imply increased perceptual sensitivity, but rather a general heightened responsiveness to stimuli. Thus, although Laureati et al. (2018) showed that variations in FN may not be linked to increased chemosensory perceptual sensitivity (in terms of supra-threshold intensities), the hedonic responses of the participants that were high in FN to vegetables and drinks that were strongly flavored were significantly decreased relative to those lower in FN. Moreover, those high in FN also show increased reluctance to seek new sensations, as measured by the sensation-seeking scale (Alley & Potter, 2011;Pliner & Hobden, 1992;Pliner & Melo, 1997;Zuckerman, Kolin, Price, & Zoob, 1964), and it has been shown that similar personality variables related to openness to new stimuli and experiences (Thrill and Adventure Seeking, Experience Seeking), as well as General Neophobia, predict the likelihood of an adult trying a novel fruit (Dovey et al., 2012). ...
... Considerable recent research has examined responses to foods as a function of adult FN (Capiola & Raudenbush, 2012;Jaeger, Rasmussen, & Prescott, 2017;Jaeger, Roigard, Hunter, & Worch, 2021;Knaapila et al., 2014;Laureati et al., 2018;Siegrist, Hartmann, & Keller, 2013;Soucier, Doma, Farrell, Leith-Bailey, & Duncan, 2019), but has not considered if there are specific sensory qualities of foods that are more important in food rejections. We suggest that the concept of sensory sensitivity/responsiveness may help explain the origin of increased arousal in high FN adults as it appears to do in children, but that it may be more relevant to food-related sensory qualities. ...
... Bitterness is strongly related to food rejections, independent of FN, but it is quite possible that a strong link to increasing FN might have been evident. Bitterness, along with astringency and sourness, has been shown to be characteristic of those vegetables (e.g., rocket, radish, chicory), beverages (e.g., coffee, grapefruit juice, beer), and even desserts (e.g., dark chocolate) that are liked less by those high in FN (Laureati et al., 2018). ...
Food neophobia (FN), typically defined in terms of rejection of unfamiliar foods but also associated with higher negative arousal in relation to food, has been established as an important personality variable in explaining food preferences and choices. Past research has examined responses to foods as a function of FN but not considered if there are specific sensory qualities of foods that are more important in food rejections. We propose that the concept of sensory sensitivity may help explain the origin of increased arousal in high FN adults, and conducted an online survey in Singapore with 1896 participants as a first step towards investigating this hypothesis. FN was measured using the FN scale (Pliner & Hobden, 1992), and additionally participants: (a) rated their agreement with a series of statements that reflected their attitudes towards food sensory qualities, and (b) completed The Foodie Index (Pickering & Pickering, 2022) to obtain measures of food involvement and enjoyment. The results reinforced earlier findings that FN is related to an overall lower level of enjoyment of foods, and further revealed that: (a) evaluation of food sensory qualities prior to, or during, eating or sensory reasons for rejecting a food were positively related to FN, and (b) increasing disengagement with foods in terms of knowledge, interest, time and money spent on food as FN increases. Collectively, the results underscore the centrality of FN in understanding consumers' food‐related experiences and behaviors by showing that FN is related to both sensitivity about specific sensory properties and low engagement with foods generally.
Practical Applications
Food and sensory profiling by consumers has been increasing in recent years. The present data will assist in interpretation of consumer studies in which FN and/or food interest/engagement has been measured, since both are found to be a strong source of variation in consumer data. In particular, both product engagement and level of FN have been shown elsewhere to impact how consumers allocate their attention to sensory tasks. This suggests that sources of variation in consumer responses, whether due to general or sensory‐specific responses to foods, are crucial in interpreting sensory profiling or preference data.
... The study found that ingredient combinations are the most crucial factor in menu choices for both dining types, while avoidance of certain foods is less significant. Laureati et al. [21], explored the relationship between neophobia, taste intensity, and food preferences in Italian consumers, discovering that less neophobic individuals have a marked preference for vegetables, particularly those with stronger tastes. [22] noted that exposure and knowledge increase liking for different cheese types. ...
... The preference for red onion in wealthier areas, over the regular one, despite its higher price and lower local production, aligns with these findings as well, possibly due to food monotony [50]. Vegetables like artichoke, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, and arugula, less favored by Italian neophobics [21], are more prevalent in Turkish districts with higher education rates, indicating a link between education and less neophobia. This also hints at different pizza preferences between Turkish and Italian consumers, warranting further investigation. ...
This study investigates whether the ingredients listed on restaurant menus can provide insights into a city's socioeconomic status. Using data from an online food delivery system, the study compares menu items with local education rates and rental prices. A machine learning model is developed to predict menu prices based on ingredients and socioeconomic factors. An efficiency metric is proposed to cluster restaurants to address autocorrelation, comparing ingredient averages to socioeconomic indicators. The analysis focuses on hundreds of menus, specifically examining pizza and Turkish pita in Ankara, Türkiye. The results indicate that including nearby rental prices significantly improves the accuracy of predicting menu prices, especially for pizza. The study also notes that wealthier areas tend to feature menus with more unique or expensive ingredients, particularly in the case of pizza, aligning with previous research on eating habits and income levels. Key contributions of this research include a comprehensive examination of restaurant menus, insights into how menus vary based on location and cuisine, and the development of Turkish-English word lists for pita and pizza menu items. Our datasets are also shared. This methodology aids in understanding local taste preferences and provides valuable information for strategic decisions regarding restaurant location and menu planning.
... However, reactions to tastes can hinder these processes, and rejection of specific foods can be associated with various tastes [39]. A liking for vegetables and beverages characterized by high levels of warning stimuli (i.e., bitterness and sourness) was lower among high neophobics, especially if subjects perceived the tastes of the novel foods as unpleasant and potentially dangerous [40]. The development of food preferences in relation to taste exposure occurs in early childhood when chemosensory senses become functional, and exposure to new foods is likely to accept new tastes and food preferences [41,42]. ...
... In contrast, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, chard, and artichokes were described as bitter and astringent, and they were rejected. However, when the rejected vegetables are commonly consumed in the region where the adolescents lived [47], such as the consumption of asparagus in the present study among adolescents from Castilla-La Mancha, these vegetables were accepted due to the high familiarity of the adolescents with this food [17,40], which is in accordance with the well-assumed knowledge that food neophobia is negatively associated with the acceptance not only of new or unfamiliar foods but also of familiar foods [48]. Therefore, the treatment of food neophobia should include familiarization with new foods and their appearance, taste, texture, and systematic introduction [8,41]. ...
Food neophobia is a reaction of dislike or fear of food, which may be due to a wide variety of factors (taste, texture, exposure at an early age, genetics, or diversity in feeding practices and food consumption). The aim of this study was to assess the preferences for tastes and foods and food neophobias among Spanish adolescents and to compare the differences between boys and girls. This was a cross-sectional observational study on 11-18-year-old healthy adolescents (n = 600; 50% female) recruited in the Castilla-La Mancha region (central Spain). Information on taste preferences, food neophobias, anthropometric measurements, and sociodemographic data was recorded. The highest taste preference was found for sweet, salty, and umami. Most adolescents usually did not try new foods outside the home, nor did they like to try foods from other countries. More than half of them also acknowledged being selective eaters or were very particular about the foods they ate. There were no significant associations between taste preference and neophobias with obesity, waist-to-height ratio (WtHR), sleep, and smoking. Adolescents showed a high unwillingness to change food habits, and most of the food neophobias found in the current study were related to new, novel, or previously unknown foods. Spanish adolescents from central Spain (Castilla-La Mancha region) showed a preference for sweet, salty, and umami tastes of foods, as well as food neophobia towards foods that they do not regularly consume, mainly those with a bitter taste. Gender and body weight showed little influence, and age had a moderate influence on food neophobias. Familiarity with foods, as well as educational activities, are suggested as useful to decrease food neophobias among adolescents.
... Although FN is defined, and prima facie measured, as a response to food novelty, there is evidence that high scores on the FNS also reflect rejection of, or lower preference for, foods that vary along dimensions other than familiarity. In addition to novel foods, those with higher FN also give lower liking ratings to, and are less likely to consume or even try, many familiar foods (De Toffoli et al., 2019;Hursti & Sjoden, 1997;Jaeger, Rasmussen, & Prescott, 2017;Knaapila et al., 2011;Laureati et al., 2018;Mustonen, Oerlemans, & Tuorila, 2012;Raudenbush & Frank, 1999;Siegrist, Hartmann, & Keller, 2013;Tuorila, Lahteenmaki, Pohjalainen, & Lotti, 2001). They also show a reluctance to re-try foods that they have already tasted (Raudenbush & Frank, 1999). ...
... In addition to stimulus novelty, high arousal also reflects complexity and intensity in sensory stimuli (Berlyne, 1970;Giacalone, Duerlund, Boegh-Petersen, Bredie, & Frost, 2014;Spinelli et al., 2020). Thus, high FN is associated with reduced liking for, and choice of, foods that are intensely flavoured by being bitter, astringent or highly pungent (De Toffoli et al., 2019;Laureati et al., 2018). This has been interpreted as due to reactions to inherent warning signals that foods may be dangerous to consume (Spinelli et al., 2020). ...
Food neophobia (FN) at moderate to high levels is very common among adult populations in all cultures and is usually defined in terms of rejection of unfamiliar foods. However, food rejection in FN is only partly related to food familiarity. Experimental and survey studies have suggested that unpleasantly high arousal may be induced by food novelty, but also be produced by foods with intense or complex flavours, that are perceived as dangerous or foreign, or that have unusual ingredients. Liking for foods with these characteristics have recently been shown to be strongly negatively associated with FN. Thus, induced high arousal may underlie food rejection in FN. Here, we collected familiarity, liking and arousal ratings, and scores on the standard Food Neophobia Scale from more than 7000 consumers in four countries - Australia, United Kingdom, Singapore, Malaysia - for a series of food names that were manipulated to produce standard and 'high arousal' (variant) versions of the same foods. Consistent across all four countries, arousal ratings increased, and liking decreased, with decreases in food familiarity. Variant food names were always associated with ratings of higher arousal than the standard names. The variant foods were generally less familiar than the standard foods, although this was not a necessary condition for their higher arousal ratings, suggesting that the other arousal-inducing factors (e.g., flavour intensity) also played a role. Across all foods, arousal ratings increased, and liking ratings decreased, as FN increased, but these effects were accentuated for the variant foods. The consistency of these effects across multiple countries supports a view that arousal is universally a strong determinant of liking for foods and that this underlies the rejection of foods, familiar and novel, in FN.
... Thirdly, none of the afore-mentioned studies has considered key mediators of sensory responsiveness such as hedonics, attitudes and personality traits (e.g., Köster, 2009). Given how both liking and psychological background can mediate variations in oral acuity ultimately shaping food choices (e.g., Laureati et al., 2018;Spinelli et al., 2018), including such factors in protocols that seek to link aspects closely related to dietary habits turns out to be crucial. Lastly, only a few studies reported measures capturing individual dietary habits (e.g., , and the minority (Fluitman et al., 2021;Solemdal et al., 2012) has considered sufficiently large cohorts in the light of the numerous confounders (demographic, dietary, environmental) affecting both chemosensation and the gastrointestinal ecosystem (e.g., Diószegi et al., 2019;Vujkovic-Cvijin et al., 2020). ...
... While PROP responsiveness varies along a continuum, discrete grouping is a common approximation of this trait (e.g., Dinnella et al., 2018;Laureati et al., 2018) as functional to easily investigate the hostrelated features of similarly responsive individuals. Accordingly, the average of bitterness ratings across the two strips was individually considered to group volunteers falling into the lowest (gLMS < 9.5), the second and the third (9.5 ≥ gLMS ≤ 31.3), and the highest (gLMS > 31.3) ...
Mounting evidence suggests that ingestive behaviors may also be affected by putative interplays between taste and gut microbiota. As yet empirically unproven, we here tested the hypothesis that variations in sensory perception in foods can mirror gut microbial ecology and shape individual dietary habits. One hundred healthy participants (52 % women, 18–30 y/o) remotely attended a 7-day (D) lasting protocol, and evaluated bitterness (D1) of 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) plus liking (D2) and intensity of sensations (D4) evoked by 5 liquid and 5 solid foods, each selected to elicit a target sensation (sweet, sour, bitter, salty, pungent). Furthermore, volunteers completed a battery of psychological questionnaires (D3), a 4-day dietary record (D1–D7), and provided one stool sample for fecal microbiota profiling by 16S rRNA gene sequencing (D4). Using a data-driven segmentation approach based on intensity scores, we identified two distinct profiles that were hypo- (CL-1, n = 36, 55.5 % women) and hyperresponsive (CL-2, n = 64, 50 % women) to oral stimulations. Moreover, CL-2 showed higher percentages of PROP Medium Tasters and pronounced pleasure-oriented attitudes. Interestingly, CL-1 exhibited higher α-diversity metrics and was enriched in 11 beneficial gut microbes (e.g., genus Eubacterium_xylanophilum_group), while two pro-inflammatory microbial genera (Ruminococcus gnavus group, Eggerthella) associated with CL-2. Relatedly, CL-1 declared higher intakes of fibers and vegetable proteins, whilst CL-2 habitually consumed more saturated fats. We provide the first empirical evidence that simultaneous variations in sensory acuity and gut microbial consortia associate with different dietary habits, thus paving the way for unravelling the complex link between host-related non-genetic factors and aetiology of eating behaviors.
... Tabela 02 -Associação do sexo com o grau de neofobia das crianças. O sexo não apresentou influência no nível de neofobia das crianças em nenhum dos 3 grupos (p>0,05), corroborando com a literatura (LAUREATI et al., 2018;ZHAO et al., 2020;TIAN;CHEN, 2021). Entretanto, algumas pesquisas mostraram maior prevalência de neofobia entre meninos (LAUREATI et al., 2015;KAAR et al., 2016), já que apresentam menor ingestão de hortaliças e um maior consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados, comparado às meninas (RAGELIENE, 2021, p. 8). ...
Objetivou-se avaliar o nível de neofobia alimentar das crianças e o efeito de estratégias educativas sobre a percepção de saudabilidade e aceitabilidade de produtos alimentícios (panqueca e torta) adicionados de nabo. Participaram 180 crianças, organizadas em três grupos: Grupo 1 (G1), sem nenhuma estratégia educativa; Grupo 2 (G2), estratégia educativa com uso de vídeo; Grupo 3 (G3), estratégia educativa de narração de história. As crianças preencheram questionários de neofobia alimentar e realizaram análise sensorial dos produtos alimentícios, que também foram avaliados à composição físico-química. Os três grupos apresentaram elevado nível de neofobia alimentar (94,3%), sem influência do sexo. As estratégias educativas melhoraram a percepção de saudabilidade, porém tiveram pouca influência na avaliação dos atributos sensoriais. Os participantes do G3 apresentaram maior aceitação global e índice de aceitabilidade (IA) para os produtos. As preparações foram bem aceitas pelas crianças (IA > 70%), além de serem classificados com bom perfil nutricional. Conclui-se que crianças em idade escolar apresentam elevado nível de neofobia alimentar. Porém, estratégias educativas como o vídeo e história são efetivas para aumentar a percepção de saudabilidade de produtos adicionados de nabo entre crianças. A adição da hortaliça em produtos alimentícios melhora o perfil nutricional, sendo favorável ao consumo.
... Food neophobia (FN), which refers to the reluctance to eat or avoidance of novel foods (Pliner & Hobden, 1992), acts as a barrier to food appreciation and consumption, particularly of foods with bitter taste, poor texture and appearance and objectionable or stronger flavours (De Toffoli et al., 2019;Dovey et al., 2008;Laureati et al., 2015), characteristics often present in many vegetables and legumes (Dovey et al., 2008). Lower FN levels have been associated with higher vegetable liking and consumption (Guzek et al., 2017;Laureati et al., 2018;Mielby et al., 2012), as well as increased diet variety and adherence to diets such as the Mediterranean diet (Karaagaç & Bellikci-Koyu, 2023). FN typically peaks during early childhood, gradually decreasing until it stabilizes during adolescence or early adulthood (Dovey et al., 2008;Hazley et al., 2022). ...
... Jaeger et al. (2017) reported a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.83 in their adult study of 1167 participants in New Zealand. In Italy, Laureati et al. (2018) found a coefficient of 0.87 with 1225 participants. For the overall scale, Siegrist et al. (2013) found coefficients of 0.80 with a sample of 4442 participants, while German and French speakers had coefficients of 0.79 and 0.82, respectively. ...
Purpose: The Food Neophobia Scale developed by Pliner and Hobden (1992) has been widely utilized globally and in Turkey for many years to measure people's fear of new foods. This study aims to determine the mean value by conducting a reliability generalization meta-analysis for the reported reliability coefficients of individual studies in Turkey's tourism field, which employed Pliner and Hobden's scale to investigate food neophobia. Additionally, this study explores variations in the mean value among subgroups. Methods: A reliability generalization meta-analysis based on a random-effects model was conducted to examine the heterogeneity of reliability coefficients in the study, along with heterogeneity analyses and moderator analyses. Results: Based on the analysis of 48 independent samples (N= 23306), the transformed mean Cronbach's alpha value was estimated to be .827 (95% CI [.796-.853]) and found to be significant. The Q-test and I2 values reveal significant heterogeneity between alpha coefficients, indicating a notable variation in the measurement reliability across samples. Moderator analyses using analog to the ANOVA and meta-regression analyses showed that reliability coefficients differed according to the variables of publication type, sample type, and proportion of women in the sample. Implications: The results offer valuable insight for researchers seeking to select appropriate scales for investigating food neophobia.
... Food Neophobia Scale. Food neophobia was assessed using the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) [20] validated in Italian [22] and in French [47]. FNS consists of ten statements rated with a 7-point scale of agreement ranging from 1 ¼ "I strongly disagree" to 7 ¼ "I strongly agree". ...
... The inherited factor in FN is uncertain but may be a tendency to experience unpleasantly high arousal in response to foods. The characteristics associated with arousal appear to be novelty, flavor intensity, and complexity, or the potential for contamination, for example, in seafood (Jaeger et al., 2023;Laureati et al., 2018). Interestingly, those high in FN are similarly responsive to complex, novel, or intense nonfood stimuli (Hursti & Sjoden, 1997). ...
... Even looking at papers published after the study by (Palmieri et al., 2019), to the best of our knowledge, our sample is the largest to date for Italy. et al., 2021), the potential food neophobic behavior of participants is measured using the six-item FNS selected by Ritchey et al. (Ritchey et al., 2003) from the FNS originally developed by Pliner and Hobden (Pliner and Hobden, 1992) and validated in Italian by Laureati et al. (Laureati et al., 2018). Respondents are asked to indicate their level of agreement/disagreement with three neophilic statements (S1, S3 and S6 of Table 1), and three neophobic statements (S2, S4, S5 of Table 1) about new foods or eating situations using a 5-point Likert scale. ...
The exploitation of natural resources from livestock farming would decrease if conventional protein sources in animal diets were partially replaced with insects through a circular economy approach. However, consumers’ acceptance of novel insect-fed (IF) animal products is key to the final success of such products. This study analyses consumers’ willingness to buy IF poultry meat and eggs using the results from an online survey of 780 Italian consumers. Overall, our results show a positive attitude of Italian consumers surveyed towards IF animal products. Moreover, we find that food neophobia and entomophobia negatively affect Italian consumers’ attitude towards those products, while the trust in the role of public authorities in ensuring food safety positively impacts on it. Also, consumers' propensity towards sustainable food increases the likelihood of buying IF animal products.
... The second section investigated FN behavior in children with the Child Food Neophobia Scale (CFNS) developed by Pliner [58] and validated in Italy by Laureati et al. [59]. The CFNS consists of ten items (five referring to neophiliac and five to neophobic attitude) evaluated with a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = "I strongly disagree" to 7 = "I strongly agree". ...
Food Neophobia (FN), defined as the reluctance to eat new or unfamiliar foods, mainly concerns fruit, vegetables, and legumes, typical of the Mediterranean Diet (MD). Considering these premises, this study aimed to clarify the relationship between FN and AMD in a sample of Italian children and their association with some socio-demographic factors and children’s nutritional status. A sample of 288 children aged 3–11 years participated in an assessment carried out with a questionnaire evaluating FN and AMD, respectively, with the Child Food Neophobia Scale (CFNS) and the KIDMED test. Most of the sample showed an intermediate (67.3%) or high level of FN (18.1%), with high rates among 6–11-year-old children (63.9%) and especially in those who were the only child (50%). The AMD was mostly low (29.5%) or medium (54.8%) and reached lower levels among higher neophobic children (51.9%; p value < 0.05). The present results confirm the study hypothesis that FN is a driver of MD abandonment and shows the positive effects on children’s eating habits and siblings. Finally, this study proves the relevance of adopting effective feeding strategies against FN to avoid its maintenance in adulthood and the detrimental effects on future overall health and well-being.
... The second section investigated FN behavior in children with the Child Food Neophobia Scale (CFNS) developed by Pliner [44] and validated in Italy by Laureati et al. [45]. The CFNS consists of 10 items (five referring to neophiliac and five to neophobic attitude) evaluated with a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = "I strongly disagree" to 7 = "I strongly agree." ...
Food Neophobia (FN), defined as the reluctance to eat new or unfamiliar foods, mainly concerns fruit, vegetables, and legumes, typical of the Mediterranean Diet (MD). Considering these premises, this study aimed to clarify the relationship between FN and AMD in a sample of Italian children and their association with some socio-demographic factors and children's nutritional status. A sample of 288 children aged 3-11 years, participated to an assessment carried out with a questionnaire evaluating FN and AMD, respectively with Child Food Neophobia Scale (CFNS) and the KIDMED Test. Most of the sample showed an intermediate (67.3%) or high level of FN (18.1%) with high rates among 6-11 years old children (63.9%) and especially in only-child (50%). The AMD was mostly low (29.5%) or medium (54.8%) and reached lower levels among higher neophobic children (51.9%; p value < 0.05). Present results confirm the study hypothesis that FN is a driver of MD abandonment and show the positive effects on children's eating habits of having siblings. Finally, this study proves the relevance of adopting effective feeding strategies against FN to avoid its maintenance in adulthood and detrimental effects on future overall health and well-being.
... This is in contrast with our initial hypothesis, as intensity is a source of arousal (Jaeger et al., 2023) and we would have expected to find a more robust effect of FN for the sample receiving the highest intensity ratings. A possible explanation to this is that the higher overall arousal scores obtained for this sample may have masked neophobia-related differences compared to when sensory characteristics are more subtle (Laureati et al., 2018). Alternatively, as the salmon sample was the only one recognized for its raw ingredient during the sensory description (see Table 6) and salmon is the most consumed species in Sweden (Borthwick et al., 2019), a certain degree of familiarity could have offset the impact of FN. ...
... Second, conscious taste perception never arises as a standalone phenomenon. Indeed, hedonics, attitudes or psychological traits (among others) act as important confounders of how food tastes to different individuals (e.g., Laureati et al., 2018;Spinelli et al., 2018), and can promote dissimilarities in food choices (Köster, 2009) ultimately shaping the salivary microbiota (Valentino et al., 2022). Despite this, such factors have only been sparsely operationalized in previous reports (Mameli et al., 2019;Valentino et al., 2022). ...
Oral microbiota-host interactions are gaining recognition as potential factors contributing to interindividual variations in taste perception. However, whether such possible links imply specific bacterial co-occurrence networks remains unknown. To address this issue, we used 16s rRNA gene sequencing to profile the salivary microbiota of 100 healthy individuals (52 % women; 18-30 y/o), who provided hedonic and psychophysical responses to 5 liquid and 5 solid commercially-available foods, each chosen to elicit a target sensation (sweet, sour, bitter, salty, pungent). The same cohort also completed several psychometric measures and a 4-day food diary. Unsupervised data-driven clustering of genus-level Aitchison distances supported the existence of two salivary microbial profiles (CL-1, CL-2). While CL-1 (n = 57; 49.1 % women) exhibited higher α-diversity metrics and was enriched in microbial genera assigned to the class Clostridia (e.g., Lachnospiraceae_[G-3]), CL-2 (n = 43; 55.8 % women) harbored greater amounts of taxa with potential cariogenic effects (e.g., genus Lactobacillus) and significantly lower abundances of inferred MetaCyc pathways related to the metabolic fate of acetate. Intriguingly, CL-2 showed enhanced responsiveness to warning oral sensations (bitter, sour, astringent) and a higher propensity to crave sweet foods or engage in prosocial behaviors. Further, the same cluster reported habitually consuming more simple carbohydrates and fewer beneficial nutrients (vegetable proteins, monounsaturated fatty acids). In summary, while the mediating role of participants' baseline diet on findings can not be definitively excluded, this work provides evidence suggesting that microbe-microbe and microbe-taste interactions may exert an influence on dietary habits and motivates further research to uncover a potential “core” taste-related salivary microbiota.
... Furthermore, as hypothesised, astringency elicited a positive response when it was presented at low intensity, while it elicited a more negative response when it was presented at higher intensity, in particular when this was evaluated with the scale. This outcome is not surprising given reports that astringency is often rated as affectively negative (De Toffoli et al., 2019;Endrizzi et al., 2021;Jaeger et al., 2009;Laureati et al., 2018;Lesschaeve & Noble, 2005) but also as a driver of liking in some foods and beverages (e.g. wine) when perceived at lower intensity (Bajec & Pickering, 2008). ...
... To calculate neophobia scores, reverse-scored items were recoded so that the direction of scoring was equal for all statements, and the scores of all 10 questions were summed. The scores were segmented into low, medium, and high by dividing the respondents into three groups corresponding to the lowest quartile, second and third quartile, and highest quartile, respectively [27]. Kendall's tau (τ) correlation was used to determine the correlations between meat and PBMA consumption frequency, and neopobia. ...
Evidence suggests that consumer perceptions and acceptance of cultivated meat (CM) differ between countries, cultures, and consumer groups. Limited research specific to Aotearoa New Zealand (A-NZ) is available. Survey responses from 592 A-NZ residents were analysed to determine CM awareness, willingness to engage with CM, and perceived CM product attributes relative to conventional meat and plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs). The effects of gender, age, meat/PBMA consumption frequency, CM awareness, and food neophobia on CM perceptions were determined. The statements were rated on a seven-point Likert scale. Half (52%) of the respondents agreed they were aware of CM. The awareness was higher in men compared to women (p = 0.036), higher in Millennials compared to Generation X (p = 0.022), and higher in regular compared to infrequent PBMA consumers (p = 0.0003). The willingness to engage with CM and perceived CM product attributes were consistently more positive in consumers who were aware, compared with consumers not aware of CM (p < 0.05). Being male, Millennial, low neophobic and a low meat, or high PBMA consumer was also associated with higher potential engagement and perceptions of CM to varying extents. Segmentation divided the respondents into three groups. The ‘positive’ cluster (41%) consumed more PBMAs and less meat and was more aware of CM than the ‘neutral’ (50%) and ‘negative’ (9%) clusters. In conclusion, consumers in A-NZ are not a homogenous group with regards to their perceptions and potential engagement with CM. Increasing awareness and familiarity with CM will be an important strategy to increase engagement with CM.
... Complimentary Contributor Copy g) Convenience (Spence, 2017); h) Neophobia and neophilia Laureati et al., 2018;Rioux et al., 2018); i) In vitro meat (Acevedo et al., 2018;Stephens et al., 2018); j) The use of blood and haeme derivatives (Stephens et al., 2018). ...
Since ancient times, human beings have consumed plants, and different cultures have
found many health benefits from them. These have been attributed to the magical powers
that plants possess or to the divine intervention of gods. However, since the advent of
science and research, it has been found that these curative benefits come from a high
content of secondary metabolites such as anthocyanins, flavonoids, terpenes, and phenols,
among many other compounds, whose biological and pharmacological activity has been
proven. Various African, Asian, and pre-Columbian cultures, among others, have
understood the healing powers of many plants from ancestral knowledge. In this chapter,
we present a brief description report about the use of the anthocyanin content of some
fruits, flowers, barks, and herbs. The applications of these plants in traditional medicine
and some scientific research that support the traditional uses is also presented.
... Twenty-eight food items were selected to represent the sensory variety in the categories of fruits (n = 10, apple, clementine, grapes, grapefruit, kiwi, orange, pineapple, raspberry, strawberry, watermelon), vegetables (n = 10, arugula, broccoli, carrot, corn, green beans, iceberg salad, peas, spinach, squash, tomato), and desserts/juices (n = 8, dark chocolate, fruit yogurt, grapefruit juice, milk chocolate, natural yogurt, orange juice, strawberry sorbet, vanilla ice cream). The products were selected among healthier (vegetables, fruits) and less healthy categories (desserts/juices) to include familiar (and some less familiar) options in both countries (Norway and Italy) based on previous studies (Dinnella et al. 2016, Monteleone et al. 2017, Laureati et al. 2018) considering products commonly consumed in Europe by preadolescents. ...
Emoji are supposed to simulate facial expressions that convey specific emotions or other situational meanings that are language-independent indicators of emotions with shared meanings between different countries. However, some research demonstrated that the meaning of emoji can differ across countries in adults, but little is known about preadolescents. The aim of Study 1 was to compare the semantic emotional meaning of emoji to describe food experiences between 11-13-y.o. Italian (n=92) and Norwegian (n=109) preadolescents by asking children to describe 46 emoji with emotion words (n=31) using the Check-All-That-Apply format. Spearman’s correlation on the relative frequencies resulting from the Cochran’s Q test and Multiple Factor Analysis (MFA) on the total frequencies of emotion words were applied to compare the emotional meaning between countries. Italian and Norwegian preadolescents were found to describe emoji with overlapping emotional meaning. This allowed the application of an emoji-based self-report questionnaire (CATA Emoji Pair Questionnaire) to measure food-elicited emotions in response to 28 food names of three food categories (fruits, vegetables, desserts/juices) in 148 Norwegian preadolescents (11-13-y.o.) (Study 2). Results showed that emoji pairs discriminated across and within food categories. Emoji pairs were shown to discriminate between food names in the vegetable and dessert/juice category despite similar liking of the products, and to give important additional information helping a better understanding of preadolescents’ food preferences.
... These questions were used in other studies carried out in Italy (46)(47)(48). Food Neophobia was quantified with the Child Food Neophobia Scale (CFNS) developed by Pliner (49) and validated in Italy by Laureati et al. (50). The CFNS consists of 10 items (five referring to neophiliac and five to neophobic attitude) evaluated with a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = "I strongly disagree" to 7 = "I strongly agree." ...
Objective
This paper aims to evaluate whether changes in lifestyle and eating habits resulting from the Covid-19 emergency have influenced the post-pandemic level of food neophobia and in children living in an Italian central region.
Methods
A sample of 99 children took part in a retrospective assessment carried out with a self-administrated questionnaire. Pre and post-pandemic evaluation of eating habits, physical activity, and lifestyle indicators was carried out. Food neophobia was evaluated following the Child Food Neophobia Scale (CFNS). Descriptive statistics were produced. A contingency analysis was performed to check associations between variables.
Results
For a large part of the sample (97%) the selective food refusal did not change during the pandemic period. About 70% of participants did not change their eating habits, with some subgroups reporting an increase in the consumption of fruits (22.2%), vegetables (19.2%), and legumes (21.2%). Relevantly the impact of the pandemic on the sedentary attitude passed from 25.3 to 70.7%. Neophobia was not associated with ponderal status (p-value 0.5). However, in normal-weight children, a high prevalence of intermediate-level neophobia (78.4%) was found. 39.4% of the studied children were involved in meal preparation during social isolation, with an increase in the proportion of children that shared all meals with their family (32.3% vs. 78.8%). Non-coercive parent behaviors in reaction to food refusal were associated with low levels of neophobia (p-value < 0.05).
Discussion
In this sample, for the effect of parents’ attitudes, the pandemic positively affected children’s food habits and, consequently, the level of neophobia after the social restrictions. The main implication of the study is the importance of capitalizing on the period of restrictions in order to involve children in meal sharing and food preparation.
... Food neophobia, defined as the reluctance to try novel food, showed a clear negative relationship with stated liking for meat both in women and in men. Recent data on a large population sample showed a significant detrimental effect of food neophobia on acceptance of commonplace foods and suggest that overall neophobic individuals like and enjoy food less than people with a lower food neophobia level (Jaeger, Rasmussen, & Prescott, 2017;Laureati et al., 2018). In addition, food neophobia was related to the mental predisposition to disgust elicited, among others, by the animal origin and appearance cues (such as disgust with blood and raw meat) that may lead to the avoidance of meat (Tuorila & Hartmann, 2020). ...
Demographics, anthropometrics, oral responsiveness to sensory stimuli and psycho-attitudinal traits were collected from a representative Italian population sample (n = 2384; 58% women, age 18–60 years) and considered as possible explanatory variables affecting meat liking. Differences in motives underlying individual variation in liking for meat were independently investigated by gender. Three groups of subjects were identified based on liking ratings: Slightly Likers, Likers and Lovers. Both common and gender-specific variables affecting liking for meat were identified. The interest in food (including its rewarding function) and eating experience, low food neophobia and relatively high Body Mass Index characterized meat Lovers irrespective to gender. The careful food selection and the food comforting function further characterized women meat Lovers. Men Slightly Likers were characterized by the interest for health-related food aspects, importance assigned to naturalness and restrained eating. Markers of oral responsiveness were ineffective for describing variation in liking for meat.
... The validated Italian version of the food neophobia questionnaire [45] was applied to investigate the level of reluctance to try and eat unfamiliar foods. The questionnaire consists of 10 statements evaluated using a seven-point Likert scale ranging from "I strongly disagree" (score 1) to "I strongly agree" (score 7). ...
Agrobiodiversity conservation includes strategies and actions to be taken to prevent landrace loss, a worldwide problem. Landraces are local varieties that have agricultural, cultural, and historical value but most of these are not studied yet. This research aimed to study the nutritional and phytochemical characteristics of the “Copafam” bean. In addition, the sensory properties and consumers’ hedonic ratings in a model food formulation (biscuits) made by this landrace have been examined. The results show that “Copafam” had a high dietary fiber content (34.83 ± 2.48 g/100 g dw) and it resulted in a great source of secondary metabolites as polyphenols (121.36 ± 5.31 mg GAE/g dw), flavonoids (6.51 ± 0.17 mg/kg dw), and anthocyanins (28.11 ± 0.16 mg Cy3 G/kg dw), having remarkable antioxidant activity too. Biscuits made from “Copafam” bean flour were characterized by a darker color and crunchy texture, and it was considered acceptable by consumers. All these characteristics make it a resource of great interest for innovative forms of consumption like fortified foods. This research showed that landraces can represent a great resource for an innovative food industry aiming to preserve agrobiodiversity and promote the sustainable development of mountain areas.
... Once the neophilic items had been reversed (Pliner & Hobden, 1992;Verbeke, 2015), the scores of the food neophobia items were summed to calculate the food neophobia (FN) score for each respondent; the scores thus could vary between 10 and 70, with higher scores reflecting higher levels of FN. Later, in accordance with the limit values of FN used by Laureati et al. (2018) to segment the subjects, respondents were classified into three different groups: the neophilic group (low FN: ≤ 18), the medium FN group (medium FN: 19-35) and the neophobic group (high FN: ≥ 36). ...
Research on alternative proteins is currently increasing to improve food security and sustainability but it is essential to understand consumers’ perception and expectations to promote the success of future foods success. This study compared attitudes towards seaweed, insects and jellyfish, investigating the role of individual variables and proposing a new approach focused on their potential gastronomic use. Using a survey, the willingness to try (WTT) seaweed, insects and jellyfish, willingness to introduce them into the diet (WTD), perception of the impact of consuming them on health and the environment, attitude towards their consumption in different gastronomic modalities, personality traits and socio-demographic characteristics were collected from 1043 Italians.
The results showed a significant effect of the product on the perceived positive impact of consumption on health (seaweed > insects > jellyfish) and the environment (jellyfish > seaweed and insects) and on WTT and WTD (seaweed > jellyfish > insects). Indications on forms of consumption, food preparations, ingredients in processed foods and food pairings more suitable for different consumer segments were obtained. The gastronomic index (GI) developed in the present study was negatively correlated with age and food neophobia and positively correlated with the perceived impact of consumption on health and WTD. The perceived impact of consumption on the environment and previous tasting experience were positively correlated with GI only for seaweed and insects.
Overall, this work provides both a new methodological approach focusing on the gastronomic perspective and insights useful for the future development of seaweed/insect/jellyfish products able to meet the expectations of consumers seeking alternative protein foods.
... The widely used Food Neophobia Scale (FNS; Laureati et al., 2018;Pliner & Hobden, 1992) was employed to assess the reluctance to try novel foods (Pliner & Hobden, 1992), a distinct but co-occurring behaviour in picky eaters (e.g., . The FNS consisted of five positively (neophilic) and five negatively (neophobic) worded items, each measured on a 7-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = "Strongly disagree" to 7 = "Strongly agree"). ...
Interest in adult picky eating (PE), i.e., the unwillingness to eat familiar foods or try novel foods, has grown rapidly in the last decade as a result of its negative health consequences. Fairly poor data are available on the prevalence of PE in Italy, mostly due to the lack of a psychometrically sound tool to measure this construct. Thus, this contribution aimed at translating and validating the 20-item Adult Picky Eating Questionnaire (APEQ) for use in the Italian context. The APEQ was translated into Italian (IT-APEQ) following a standard forward–backward procedure and administered online to a large cohort of Italian adults (N=1030, 69.9% women, 18-75 yo), who also completed a series of psychometric and dietary measures to test both the convergent and discriminant validity of the IT-APEQ. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original four-factor structure of APEQ. The IT-APEQ showed invariance across genders, good internal consistency, and strong test-retest reliability (N=599, 70.5% women, 18-75 yo). As expected, the IT-APEQ was positively associated with eating inflexibility, food neophobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and disgust propensity/sensitivity, whereas it was anticorrelated with indices of diet variety. Moreover, we documented for the first time a negative link between adult PE and adherence to the Mediterranean diet. Our results suggest that the IT-APEQ demonstrates sound psychometric properties. Hence, we advocate its future usage to shed light into other correlates of PE in the Italian context and bolster cross-cultural research on adult PE, which is key to developing targeted strategies aimed at improving diet diversity and quality.
... Written statements originated from the cultural context in which they were developed, and these may lose or change their meaning in another culture (see Ares, 2018). Translating to other languages introduces risks (see Ritchey, Frank, Hursti, & Tuorila, 2003;Laureati et al., 2018). Statements may lose their topicality in time, as suggested by Metcalf, Wiener, and Saliba (2022). ...
An alternative Food Neophobia Scale (FNS-A) was developed in three studies to measure food neophobia (reluctance to eat and avoidance of trying new foods). In Study 1, the original food neophobia scale, FNS (Pliner, & Hobden, 1992), was first critically examined leading to modifications in five and omission of two statements. Furthermore, eight positive and eight negative statements were elicited and introduced along with eight original or modified FNS statements to 575 respondents in South Africa, Lesotho, and Botswana. Study 2 (n=1010) was used to confirm the factorial structure of the scale, and Study 3 (n=141) was used to test the reliability of FNS-A through test-retest data. The structure of the scale was analyzed using exploratory (Study 1 and 2) and confirmatory (Study 2) factor analysis, eventually leading to four positive and four negative statements regarding new foods, loaded on two factors labelled approach and avoidance. Test-retest reliability at a 2 weeks’ time interval as well as convergent and divergent validity measured against other scales was good (Study 3). In all three studies, predictive validity was evaluated against willingness to try or expected liking ratings of unfamiliar or novel food names or food concept descriptions. This evaluation showed satisfactory performance. FNS-A is a promising tool for the quantification of individual responses to unfamiliar or novel foods in an easy and reliable manner, but further studies in other populations and contexts are needed to confirm the applicability.
Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) includes age-inappropriate feeding behaviors in eating patterns, including food neophobia, defined as refusal or reluctance to eat new or unknown foods. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of ARFID and food neophobia among adults and determine the related characteristics of these risks. The study used an anonymous survey questionnaire consisting of three parts as the research tool. The first part of the questionnaire was a metric and concerned socio-demographic data. The Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) and the Nine-Item Avoidance/Restrictive Food Disorder Screen Questionnaire (NIAS) were used to evaluate the eating disorders. The survey included 309 people (60.2% women, 39.8% men) aged 18–77 years. NIAS results indicated that 15.2% of the subjects showed food selectivity, and 11.0% had food anxiety. In the FNS assessment, 42.4% had a low risk of food neophobia, 38.2% a medium risk, and 19.4% a high risk. A higher risk of food neophobia correlated with higher NIAS scores, indicating a higher risk of ARFID (p = 0.00231). The NIAS score increased with the risk of food neophobia (p = 0.000). Respondents at low risk of neophobia were most likely to avoid several products (83.97%), while in the high-risk group, 56.67% did not want to eat a favorite food enriched with a new ingredient. A higher risk of neophobia was correlated with more food avoidance and adverse reactions to new foods (p = 0.000). A higher risk of food neophobia is strongly correlated with a higher risk of ARFID. Although demographics did not significantly impact NIAS results, some trends were noted, such as higher scores among older and underweight people. Those with a higher risk of food neophobia show more food avoidance and a greater reluctance to experiment with new ingredients. Public education should emphasize that eating disorders affect both sexes equally, with tailored interventions for high-risk groups such as the elderly, rural populations, and those with lower education. Health policies should promote access to nutrition education, psychological support, and diverse food options, while further research is needed to improve targeted interventions.
Large amounts of money, time and effort are devoted to sensory and consumer research in food and beverage companies in an attempt to maximize the chances of new products succeeding in the marketplace. Many new products fail due to lack of consumer interest. Answers to what causes this and what can be done about it are complex and remain unclear. This wide-ranging reference collates important information about all aspects of this in one volume for the first time. It provides comprehensive, state-of-art coverage of essential concepts, methods and applications related to the study of consumer evaluation, acceptance and adoption of new foods and beverages. Combining knowledge and expertise from multiple disciplines that study food sensory evaluation and consumer behaviour, it covers advanced methods including analytical, instrumental and human characterization of flavour, aspects of food processing and special research applications of knowledge and methods related to consumers’ evaluation of new food products. Researchers and professionals working in food science and chemistry are sure to find this an interesting read.
The use of insects as a protein source in feed production can significantly improve the sustainability of livestock
production. Despite several environmental and animal welfare benefits, the economic sustainability of such an
approach depends on the level of consumer acceptance and willingness to pay for insect-fed poultry diets. Using
the results of an online survey of more than 850 Italian consumers, we first examine the main differences between
two groups of consumers: those who are willing to buy insect-fed poultry meat and eggs and those who are
not. The t-test is used to search for statistically significant differences between the two groups in terms of their
stated preferences for key food attributes that influence purchase decisions, as well as their view on food safety,
quality and environmental issues. We then use ordered logit regression to estimate the determinants of consumers’
willingness to pay a price premium for insect-fed poultry compared to conventional poultry products. Particular
attention is paid to the possible role of trust in the ability of the food system to provide safe food in influencing
consumers’ preferences. The results show that consumers who are willing to buy insect-fed meat and eggs are more
environmentally aware, have a stronger belief in the crucial role that changes in current food consumption patterns
can play for the environment and social well-being, and have a higher level of trust in the system that guarantees
food safety. The willingness to pay a price premium for insect-fed poultry food is mainly influenced by respondents’
beliefs about insect-fed poultry food, especially in terms of its expected quality characteristics and animal welfare.
Findings from this analysis could provide insights into investments to ensure the economic sustainability of a more
circular supply chain.
The global environmental changes require the development of new food formulations with sustainable ingredients. In this context, legumes could be used to enrich foods with beneficial consequences both on human health and sustainability of the agri‐food system. The aim was to evaluate the liking of a whole corn‐based formulation including chickpea or red lentil flour with or without providing health and environmental information about legumes. The effect of the conveyed information in subjects with different food neophobia (FN) level as well as the association between FN and different sustainability dimensions were also investigated. A 100% whole‐corn sample and two samples added with 20% of chickpea or red lentil flour were tested by 127 consumers in blind, expected, and real conditions. Subjects completed questionnaires about FN, sustainable behavior, perceived environmental impact of food products, beliefs, and attitudes toward sustainable food. Legume‐based products were equally liked as the control sample indicating that these food ingredients are promising for the enrichment of polenta samples. The information increased consumers' hedonic expectations. However, incomplete assimilation was found for samples with legumes. When the effect of information was assessed as a function of FN level, a complete assimilation for subjects with low (chickpea sample) and medium (red lentil sample) FN score was found, while no significant effect was seen for subjects with high FN score. A significant negative association was found between FN and sustainability commitment.
Practical Application
The results of the present study demonstrate that the development of sustainable food formulations using legumes is promising and that conveying health and environmental sustainability information contribute to increase consumer acceptance. However, consumers with high levels of FN were insensitive to information and were also those with low interest in sustainability issues. As a practical application, personalized communication strategies should be developed to reach different consumers targets when specific innovations are launched on the market alongside with industry efforts in developing marketing initiatives raising consumers awareness about health and environmental aspects.
Over the last half-century, variable responses to sweetness have repeatedly been shown to fall into a small number of hedonic responses, implying that looking only at group means may can obfuscate meaningfully different response patterns. Comparative data for sourness is quite sparse, especially in adults. While increased liking with higher acid concentration has been reported for some children, in adults, sourness is classically assumed to be aversive, with a monotonic drop in liking with increasing sourness. Here, we test this assumption using a simple model system or an experimental beverage in convenience samples of adults from the United States (increasing citric acid in water) and Italy (increasing citric acid in pear juice). Participants rated intensity and liking of sampled stimuli. For both cohorts, we find clear evidence of three distinct patterns of responses: a strong negative group where liking dropped with increased sourness, an intermediate group who showed a more muted drop in liking with more sourness, and a strong positive group where liking increased with more sourness. Strikingly, both cohorts showed similar proportions of response patterns, with ~63-70 % in the strong negative group, and ~11-12 % in the strong positive group, suggesting these proportions may be stable across cultures. Notably, the three groups did not differ by age or gender. These data support the existence of different hedonic response profiles to sour stimuli in adults, once again highlighting the importance of looking at individual differences and potential consumer segments, rather than merely averaging hedonic responses across all individuals within a group.
Sweetness has been proposed to be an important quality in the decision to consume alcohol, and strong preferences for sweet tastes have been associated with alcohol abuse. However, alcohol is characterized by a number of other sensory properties, including astringency and bitterness that may drive preference and consumption. Spinelli et al. (2021) classified individuals into three sweet-sensory liking clusters (High Sweet-Liking, Moderate Sweet-Liking, and Inverted-U) that differed in their sweetness optima and sensory-liking patterns (relationship between liking and sweetness, bitterness and astringency perception in a food model). The current paper replicates the sweet sensory-liking clusters in a new set of participants (n = 1976), and extends the predicted value of these clusters examining their relationship to wine and other types of alcoholic beverages by gender using a split-sample approach on a total of over 3000 adults. The sweet sensory-liking clusters had a predictive relationship for the familiarity and liking of some alcoholic beverages characterized by stronger tastes, but not weekly alcohol intake levels. Thus, although sweet sensory-liking clusters may be associated with the type of beverages and frequency with which a person will drink and enjoy a type of alcoholic beverage, they are poor predictors of the quantity of alcohol that a person ingests over the course of a week.
Food industries are developing new processing technologies, resulting in the emergence of new product categories, including ready-to-eat meals, functional foods and beverages, and plant-based foods, etc. Rapid globalization, changes in lifestyle, consumer awareness, and perception toward food drive further technical advancements. However, consumer perception remains the prime factor for food marketing and technological development. Consumer perception is a trifecta of sensory properties, personal and environmental factors. Sensory and personal factors include consumer age, attitude, health condition, nutrition awareness, and religion which directly influence consumer choice. Whereas environmental factors consist of regional variation in the food process, national economic status, and consumer purchasing power. All these factors affect consumers' decisions to accept or reject foods. Additionally, consumers are more willing to taste innovative food products that assure the safety and quality of the product.
Multiple sensor technologies including electronic nose (E-nose), electronic tongue (E-tongue), colorimeter and texture analyzer combined with chemometrics and dada fusion strategies were applied to characterize the flavor quality of traditional Chinese fermented soybean paste. Principal components analysis (PCA) was performed to divide the selected soybean pastes into three clusters which was not completely consistent with geographical regions of selected samples. Support vector machine regression (SVR) outperformed partial least squares regression (PLSR) in quantitatively predicting sensory attributes. Additionally, prediction of overall flavor of soybean paste based on data fusion of multiple sensor information, with a correlation coefficient of prediction (Rp) of 0.9636 based on SVR, was better than prediction of E-nose and E-tongue data fusion (Rp=0.9267). This study suggested multiple sensor technologies coupled with chemometrics can be a promising tool for flavor assessment and characterization of fermented soybean paste or other food matrixes.
This chapter discusses the role of appetite regulation in food choice and how appetite is influenced by the nutrient content of a food and by its degree of processing. It also considers the main issues that influence food choice in relation to a Med diet, namely taste, cost and convenience, and also variety, health and animal welfare and environmental issues. Appetite and satiation bookend a meal by controlling its start and finish. Two key characteristics of a food that regulate appetite and satiation are its nutrient content and its degree of processing. Co‐ordinating eating patterns with fixed meal times, rather than snacking, may be another factor that helps regulate food intake. Taste has been described as the body's ‘nutritional gatekeeper’ because of its fundamental role in influencing food consumption.
Given the rise of food products targeted at children and the need of healthier products to combat the global rise of childhood obesity, children take an important role in nowadays’ consumer testing. Although children between 4-11 years are already able to perform a range of consumer tests similar to adults, the assessment of children’s food preferences requires engaging and age-appropriate methods. Emotions have been shown to give additional information about food products compared to hedonic measurements, however, they are understudied in children. Growing interest for emoji to measure consumer’s product-elicited emotions emerged in the field of sensory and consumer science over the past years. However, previous studies often selected emoji without the consideration of how emoji are interpreted by preadolescents regarding their semantic and dimensional meanings. Moreover, research found associations between personality traits, taste responsiveness and food preferences, which constitutes another understudied topic in emotion research with children. Understanding this relationship could further help to understand factors influencing preadolescents’ food preferences. To tackle this problem, the aim of the PhD thesis was to develop an emoji-based self-report questionnaire, the Emoji Pair Questionnaire, for preadolescents consisting of a food-specific emoji list with identified emotional meaning and to validate and apply the tool to test its discriminant ability in response to food. A further aim was to investigate individual differences in emotional responses to foods by clustering children according to patterns of emotional responses and by testing the clusters for differences in personality traits, 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) status and sensory responsiveness to basic tastes. A total of 711 children (9-13-y.o.) participated in seven studies, which attended primary and secondary school classes in schools based in Italy (n=454, Study 1-5) and Norway (n=257, Study 6 and 7). Study 1 identified 46 of 92 emoji as food-related and relevant for children to describe their emotions in response to food experiences. Study 2, that used projective mapping, showed that emoji were discriminated along three dimensions, that were interpreted as valence, power, and arousal. Results of Study 3 and 4, that used the Check-All-That-Apply method with emoji and emotion words respectively, were congruent in linking emoji and emotions words. Positive emoji were described by more words in general, which could be xii explained by the context dependent use of emoji, which was clarified in Study 5 (qualitative interviews). Emoji expressing similar semantic and dimensional meanings were grouped in pairs of two, based on the idea that the grouping of the two emoji with the most similar semantic and dimensional meaning allows to better identify the overall meaning of the emoji pair. Emoji with ambiguous meaning were excluded. Finally, the Emoji Pair Questionnaire contained a reduced list of 17 emoji pairs (n=34 emoji) varying in valence, power, and arousal dimension. Italian and Norwegian preadolescents were found to describe emoji with overlapping emotional meaning (Study 6), which allowed the validation and application of the Emoji Pair Questionnaire in Norway. Findings of Study 7 showed that emoji pairs varied between food categories and were able to discriminate between familiar foods despite similar liking. Emoji also discriminated significantly among food products despite similar liking within the food categories of vegetables and desserts/juices, but not within the fruit category. The tasted samples (grapefruit juice spiked with sucrose) differed in liking and in associated emoji. Children were classified into three clusters according to their emotional patterns in Principal Component Analysis. The three clusters differed also in liking, surprise, sensitivity to reward, responsiveness to sweet, sour, and ability to discriminate between food samples. The findings obtained in this PhD thesis illustrate that the newly developed Emoji Pair Questionnaire can be used to not only understand children’s food behavior but also to develop novel products targeted at specific clusters of children considering their individual differences in emotions, personality traits and sensory responsiveness by providing target-specific products.
3D food printing relies on the concepts of science‐based cooking techniques such as molecular cuisine and note‐by‐note cuisines. The market reach of any novel food product is highly determined by consumer's acceptability. Analysis of consumer's attitudes toward 3D‐printed foods is quite adequate in drawing significant conclusions about consumer preference and market trends. The present chapter aims at summarizing the market trends and consumer preference toward 3D‐printed foods. 3D food printing is an emerging technology that tackles the problem of everchanging consumer food choices as 3D‐printed foods satisfy consumers both physiologically and psychologically. However, certain aspects such as food neophobia and social, ethical, and cultural concerns remain as mental barriers to 3D‐printed foods from alternative ingredients. Hence, the present chapter provides a detailed discussion on the consumer acceptance of 3D food printing in comparison with other emerging food technologies (food irradiation, nanotechnology, stem cell technology, and genetically modified foods). The food business model of prosumerism is discussed in context with 3D food printing. Various methods and approaches used for assessing consumer perception of foods are presented along with intervention tools to increase consumer awareness. Certainly, the present chapter highlights the significant aspects of the success of 3D printing technology from the consumers' viewpoint, especially the willingness and perception on the adoption of 3D printing of foods by overcoming the existing social, cultural, ethical, and technical concerns.
The addition of table salt has been reported to enable better acceptance when consuming the least preferred vegetables belonging to the Cruciferae family. Considering the adverse effect of excessive table salt intake on incidence of hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, it is essential to explore an alternative healthier option for better acceptance and to encourage consumption of these vegetables. In this study, 261 adult participants were evaluated for their preferences toward basic tastes and food as well as sensory evaluation of a meal prepared from cruciferous vegetables with the addition of two different salts, sodium chloride and salt substitute containing a blend of potassium and sodium salts. A general questionnaire was used to assess taste and food preferences, while the Cruciferous Vegetable Food Frequency Questionnaire (CVFFQ) was used for vegetable intake assessment. The Labeled Magnitude Scale (LMS), Just About Right (JAR) scale, and several hedonic scales were used to determine taster status and sensory evaluation. The results show that a low concentration of the salt substitute did not impact bitterness suppression but did result in higher preference of the cruciferous vegetable meal. Although, subjects self-reported to have salty taste preferences were more sensitive to bitter taste, they did not perceive samples as less salty and less acceptable than subjects with lower sensitivity. The results show the necessity for further examination of the effectiveness of different concentrations of the assessed salt substitute in suppressing perceived bitterness of cruciferous vegetables and regarding their overall acceptance for inclusion in diets.
Compounds found in a number of foods such as herbs and spices, elicit chemesthetic sensations. This chapter explores the factors underlying the variability in response to chemesthetic sensations from food and the mechanisms by which such sensations can shift from aversive to appetitive. Genetic influences on oral sensitivity may account for individual differences at baseline, while personality differences or cognitive factors may account for the willingness to explore and ultimately incorporate novel food sensations, including initially aversive ones. Additionally, post-ingestive benefits for some may also contribute to continued liking and consumption. To be sure, it is likely that more than one factor plays a role in the acquisition and maintenance of preference for spicy oral sensations, and it is abundantly clear that pungent spices will continue to elicit highly valued and appetitive sensations in the diets of many cultures, worldwide.
The evidence base for the health effects of spice consumption is insufficient, with only one large population-based study and no reports from Europe or North America. Our objective was to analyze the association between consumption of hot red chili peppers and mortality, using a population-based prospective cohort from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) III, a representative sample of US noninstitutionalized adults, in which participants were surveyed from 1988 to 1994. The frequency of hot red chili pepper consumption was measured in 16,179 participants at least 18 years of age. Total and cause-specific mortality were the main outcome measures. During 273,877 person-years of follow-up (median 18.9 years), a total of 4,946 deaths were observed. Total mortality for participants who consumed hot red chili peppers was 21.6% compared to 33.6% for those who did not (absolute risk reduction of 12%; relative risk of 0.64). Adjusted for demographic, lifestyle, and clinical characteristics, the hazard ratio was 0.87 (P = 0.01; 95% Confidence Interval 0.77, 0.97). Consumption of hot red chili peppers was associated with a 13% reduction in the instantaneous hazard of death. Similar, but statistically nonsignificant trends were seen for deaths from vascular disease, but not from other causes. In this large population-based prospective study, the consumption of hot red chili pepper was associated with reduced mortality. Hot red chili peppers may be a beneficial component of the diet.
Individual differences in subjective response to alcohol play a crucial role in the development of heavy drinking and related problems. In light of this, a growing focus of research has been identifying factors that contribute to differences in response. The aim of the present study was to determine whether individual differences in the subjective experience of rewarding and aversive effects of alcohol are a specific manifestation of general differences in reward and punishment sensitivity. Eighty-nine participants (M age = 22.4, SD = 1.9; 47.2% women) consumed a moderate dose of alcohol, i.e., peak breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) ≈ 0.080 g%, and rated their level of stimulation and sedation at seven timepoints over the BrAC curve. Sensitivity to reward and punishment were assessed by a self-report questionnaire prior to consumption. Multilevel growth models showed that post-consumption changes in stimulation ratings varied as a function of participants' level of reward and punishment sensitivity. Drinkers more sensitive to reward reported feeling more stimulated shortly after drinking and exhibited an attenuated rate of decline in stimulation over the blood alcohol curve, relative to drinkers with less strong reward sensitivity. Reward sensitivity was not related to subjective ratings of sedation, and punishment sensitivity was not related to either stimulation or sedation ratings. Findings suggest that reward sensitivity may increase risk for alcohol misuse among young adult social drinkers by increasing their subjective feelings of stimulation while drinking.
Picky eating (also known as fussy, faddy or choosy eating) is usually classified as part of a spectrum of feeding difficulties. It is characterised by an unwillingness to eat familiar foods or to try new foods, as well as strong food preferences. The consequences may include poor dietary variety during early childhood. This, in turn, can lead to concern about the nutrient composition of the diet and thus possible adverse health-related outcomes. There is no single widely accepted definition of picky eating, and therefore there is little consensus on an appropriate assessment measure and a wide range of estimates of prevalence. In this review we first examine common definitions of picky eating used in research studies, and identify the methods that have been used to assess picky eating. These methods include the use of subscales in validated questionnaires, such as the Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire and the Child Feeding Questionnaire as well as study-specific question(s). Second, we review data on the prevalence of picky eating in published studies. For comparison we present prevalence data from the UK Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) in children at four time points (24, 38, 54 and 65 months of age) using a study-specific question. Finally, published data on the effects of picky eating on dietary intakes (both variety and nutrient composition) are reviewed, and the need for more health-related data and longitudinal data is discussed.
Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Previous research has identified relationships between chemosensory reactivity and food neophobia in children. However, most studies have investigated this relationship using declarative data and without separately analysing smell and taste reactivity. Our first objective was to assess the relationships between smell and taste differential reactivity in toddlers (i.e. reactivity towards several stimuli), using experimental behavioural measurements. The second objective was to determine the relationships between smell (or taste) differential reactivity and food neophobia in toddlers, with the hypothesis that the more responsive a toddler was across food odours or tastes, the more neophobic s/he would be. An additional objective was to determine whether the potential relationships between smell (or taste) differential reactivity and food neophobia differ according to gender. One hundred and twenty-three toddlers aged from 20 to 22 months from the Opaline birth cohort (Observatory of Food Preferences in Infants and Children) were involved. A questionnaire was used to assess child's food neophobia. Toddlers' differential reactivity for smell (and for taste) was defined as the variability of behavioural responses over 8 odorants, and over the five basic tastes. Smell and taste differential reactivities were not correlated. Food neophobia scores were modestly but significantly positively correlated with smell differential reactivity but not with taste differential reactivity. When gender was considered, smell reactivity and neophobia were correlated only among boys. This indicates the need to study smell and taste reactivity separately to determine their associations with eating behaviours. This suggests that the rejection of novel foods in neophobic boys could be partly due to food odour. This finding is new and clearly requires further investigation.
Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
The goal of the Denver Papillae Protocol is to use a dichotomous key to define and prioritize the characteristics of fungiform papillae (FP) to ensure consistent scoring between scorers. This protocol builds off of a need that has arisen from the last two decades of taste research using FP as a proxy for taste pore density. FP density has historically been analyzed using Miller & Reedy's 1990 characterizations of their morphology: round, stained lighter, large, and elevated. In this work, the authors forewarned that stricter definitions of FP morphology needed to be outlined. Despite this call to action, follow up literature has been scarce, with most studies continuing to cite Miller & Reedy's original work. Consequently, FP density reports have been highly variable and, combined with small sample sizes, may contribute to the discrepant conclusions on the role of FP in taste sensitivity. The Genetics of Taste Lab explored this apparent inconsistency in counting and found that scorers were individually prioritizing the importance of these characteristics differently and had no guidance for when a papilla had some, but not all, of the reported qualities of FP. The result of this subjectivity is highly variable FP counts of the same tongue image. The Denver Papillae Protocol has been developed to remedy this consequence through use of a dichotomous key that further defines and prioritizes the importance of the characteristics put forth by Miller & Reedy. The proposed method could help create a standard way to quantify FP for researchers in the field of taste and nutritional studies.
Food neophobia has been associated with decreased consumption of vegetables mainly among children. We hypothesized that food neophobia in adults is also associated with lower overall dietary quality and higher BMI.
Data for the present cross-sectional analyses were derived from parents in a follow-up family study.
The STEPS study, a longitudinal study of health and development of a cohort of children born in south-west Finland.
The parents, 1178 women (age 19-45 years, mean 32·2 years) and 1013 men (age 18-57 years, mean 34·1 years), completed a questionnaire at home when their child was 13 months old. The questionnaire included the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS; range 10-70), the Index of Diet Quality (IDQ; range 0-16) and a measure of fruit and vegetable consumption. At that time the participants' height and weight were also measured by a research nurse to calculate BMI.
Compared with the food neophilics (FNS score 10-24), the food neophobics (FNS score 40-70) consumed fewer vegetables (women: 15 v. 10 portions/week; men: 13 v. 7 portions/week), scored lower on the IDQ (women: 9·7 v. 8·5; men: 8·8 v. 7·8) and had higher BMI (women: 24·2 v. 26·0 kg/m2; men: 26·5 v. 27·5 kg/m2) as tested by one-way ANOVA, with all P values <0·001 in women and <0·05 in men. The food neophobics followed a diet lower in nutritional quality than did the food neophilics, especially regarding vegetables.
Food neophobia may complicate adaptation to dietary recommendations and predispose to overweight.
The sense of taste is often referred to as a 'nutritional gatekeeper', thought to have evolved to indicate energy sources and prevent ingestion of potential toxins. Fungiform papillae are structures on the anterior tongue in which taste buds are situated. They are concentrated at the tongue's tip and they can provide a useful estimate of overall taste bud density for taste research. Some reports suggest taste perception may differ subtly across tongue regions, irrespective of FP number. Other data show an association between taste intensity perception for the bitter compound 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) and FP density. However, contradictions exist in the literature, with more recent, larger studies suggesting little or no association between FP number and perceived taste intensity. Much research has examined the relation between FP density and PROP perception, while other tastes have been less thoroughly studied. Here, in a cohort of mainly Caucasian individuals, aged 18-45, recruited from the campus of a large rural university, we examined regional and whole-mouth taste intensities, and FP density using an updated method of a digital still photography method first described in 2005. We found regional differences in suprathreshold intensity. Although all taste sensations were experienced all over the tongue, once again disproving the mythical tongue map, we also observed bitter and umami taste perception to be significantly greater on the posterior tongue than on the anterior tongue. In contrast, there were no regional differences observed for sweet, salty or sour tastes. The relation of FP density to whole-mouth intensity of 6-n-propylthiouracil, and to the intensity of saltiness of NaCl, sweetness from sucrose or from Acesulfame-K, bitterness of quinine, or burning from capsaicin delivered to different regions of the tongue are also discussed.
Food neophobia, that is the reluctance to try novel foods, is an attitude that dramatically affects human feeding behavior in many different aspects among which food preferences and food choices appear to be the most thoroughly considered. This attitude has an important evolutionary meaning since it protects the individual from ingesting potentially dangerous substances. On the other hand, it fosters an avoidance behavior that can extend even toward useful food elements. A strong link exists between food neophobia and both the variety in one person’s diet and previous exposures to different foods. In this review, the more recent findings about food neophobia will be concisely described. Given the suggested connection between the exposure to different foods and food neophobia, this review will focus on the relation between this attitude and human chemosensory abilities. Olfaction, in particular, is a sensory modality that has a central role in flavor perception and in food preference acquisition. Therefore, the latest evidences about its relation with food neophobia will be discussed along with the applied and cognitive implications.
The aims of the present study were to assess whether: (a) visceral and moral disgust share a common oral origin (taste); (b) moral transgressions that are also viscerally involving are evaluated accordingly as a function of individual differences in taste sensitivity; (c) verbal priming interacts with taste sensitivity to alter how disgust is experienced in moral transgressions; and (d) whether gender moderates these effects. Standard tests of disgust sensitivity, a questionnaire developed for this research assessing different types of moral transgressions (nonvisceral, implied-visceral, visceral) with the terms "angry" and "grossed-out," and a taste sensitivity test of 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) were administered to 102 participants. Results confirmed past findings that the more sensitive to PROP a participant was the more disgusted they were by visceral, but not moral, disgust elicitors. Importantly, the findings newly revealed that taste sensitivity had no bearing on evaluations of moral transgressions, regardless of their visceral nature, when "angry" was the emotion primed. However, when "grossed-out" was primed for evaluating moral violations, the more intense PROP tasted to a participant the more "grossed-out" they were by all transgressions. Women were generally more disgust sensitive and morally condemning than men, but disgust test, transgression type, and priming scale modulated these effects. The present findings support the proposition that moral and visceral disgust do not share a common oral origin, but show that linguistic priming can transform a moral transgression into a viscerally repulsive event and that susceptibility to this priming varies as a function of an individual's sensitivity to the origins of visceral disgust-bitter taste. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between two well-established markers of taste perception, 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) responsiveness and fungiform papillae number, in obese and healthy-weight subjects. The association between taste responsiveness and food neophobia attitude was evaluated to understand if these variables are linked to nutritional status of subjects. Forty healthy-weight (Body Mass Index: 22.67 ± 0.43 kg/m²) and forty-five obese (Body Mass Index: 37.57 ± 0.77 kg/m²) subjects were involved. PROP responsiveness and fungiform papillae number were positively correlated to each other in both groups of subjects (healthy-weight: r = 0.67, p < 0.001; obese: r = 0.83, p < 0.001). PROP responsiveness ratings and fungiform papillae number were significantly negatively correlated with food neophobia scores in both group of subjects (p < 0.01). Subjects characterized as significantly less sensitive and more neophobics had a higher Body Mass Index. Especially, obese men showed significant lower taste responsiveness (p < 0.05) and higher food neophobia scores (p < 0.05) compared to obese women and healthy-weight subjects, both sexes. The nutritional status of the subjects seems to be linked to taste responsiveness and food neophobic attitude. These data suggest that, between several factors which could play a role in the control of body weight, understand how sensory perception affects eating behavior could give important information to study variables which may determine food habits.
Responses to sweetness are reported in two populations, one segmented by gender and age, and the other one by gender only. The strength of the association between liking for specific sweet foods and liking for an aqueous sucrose solution (20% w/v) is also tested, and health attitudes examined. British adults (n = 1855, age 17-82, mean 55 years, 90% women) and Finnish young adults (n=1292, age 20-25, mean 22 years, 54% women) rated their liking of ten sweet foods and beverages based on product names, and completed questionnaires on Craving for Sweet Foods (CSF) and General Health Interest (GHI). One-half of Brits and a third of Finns rated liking and intensity of sucrose solution. In factor analysis, identical categories of liking for sweet products were formed in each population, one consisting of five processed sweets (“Goodies”), and the other of naturally sweet fruits and berries (“Fruits”). Sugared and sugar-free soft drinks and fruit juice loaded on the third factor. After age 50, British men scored higher than British women in CSF and liking for several sweet products; Finnish women scored higher than Finnish men in CSF and liking for most sweet products. GHI was positively associated with liking for Fruits and negatively with liking for sugared soft drinks. Sucrose solution was better liked by British men than women, with no gender difference in Finns. Liking for sucrose solution was only weakly associated with liking for sweet products based on product names. In two demographically different European populations, attraction to sweet gathered in similar product categories, but manifested differently at different ages and each gender.
Food neophobia (FN) has been shown to be a strong influence on food preferences using primarily small data sets. This has limited the explanatory power of FN and the extent to which it can be related to other factors that influence food choice. To address these limitations, we collected Food Neophobia Scale data from 1167 adults from New Zealand over a 45-month period. Participants also completed a 112-item food preference questionnaire and a self-report 24°hour, a 145 item food intake recall survey, and the Food Choice Questionnaire (FCQ). As a way of providing a structure to the food intake and preference data, in each case the food items were condensed into patterns described in terms of the foods/beverages with highest factor loadings. We then determined the impact of season and participant age, gender, education and income on these factors, as well as the interaction of these variables with FN scores, divided into tertiles. FN was a strong influence on both intake frequency and preferences in the majority of the intake/preference factor patterns. When significant associations with FN were established, both frequency of intake and preference was lower among high FN individuals. Notably, the effect of FN on food preferences was evident on many commonplace foods making up the diet, suggesting that high FN individuals like food overall less than do those with lower degrees of FN. Seasonal effects in food intake were demonstrated, but with smaller impact for higher levels of FN. While associations between FN varied according to all demographic variables, these relationships varied as a function of the intake/preference patterns. Overall, the results suggest that FN is an important barrier to dietary change and addressing diet-related health problems.
Food choice is influenced by many interacting factors in humans. Its multidimensional and complex nature is well recognized, particularly within the sensory and consumer food science field. However, the vast majority of the studies aimed at understanding determinants of food choices, preferences, and eating behaviours are affected by important limitations: the limited number of factors that are considered at once and the sample size. Furthermore, sensory and hedonic responses to actual food stimuli, are often not included in such studies.
Individual differences in astringency perception are poorly understood. Astringent compounds such as tannins stimulate the release of specific classes of salivary proteins. These proteins form complexes with tannins, altering their perceived astringency and reducing their bioavailability. We studied the bitter compound, 6-n-propylthioural (PROP), as a phenotypic marker for variation in astringency perception and salivary protein responses. Seventy-nine subjects classified by PROP taster status rated cranberry juice cocktail (CJC) supplemented with 0, 1.5 or 2.0 g/L tannic acid (TA). Saliva for protein analyses was collected at rest, or after stimulation with TA or cranberry juice (CJ). CJC with 1.5 g/L TA was found to be less astringent, and was liked more by PROP non-taster males than PROP taster males, consistent with the expectation that non-tasters are less sensitive to astringency. Levels of aPRPs and bPRPs decreased after TA, while levels of aPRPs, bPRPs and Cystatins unexpectedly rose after CJ. Increases in bPRPs and Cystatins were only observed in PROP tasters. The PROP phenotype plays a complex role in the perceived astringency and salivary response to cranberries and may be involved in the release of salivary proteins implicated in oral health.
Application of historical knowledge and beliefs about plant-based health remedies has been limited in Western nations. However, with increased awareness of, and interest in, alternative health management techniques has come a growing openness to their potential efficacy for numerous conditions. This chapter focuses on the effects of single pungent spices (i.e., black pepper, chili peppers, cinnamon, ginger, mustard, and saffron) on dimensions of energy balance (i.e., appetite, food intake, energy expenditure, and body weight). Consumption of pungent spices is often linked to enhanced thermogenesis (i.e., augmented energy expenditure and/or substrate oxidation). While hot red pepper (capsaicin) is the best studied of the pungent spices, limited data exist on the thermogenic effects of black pepper (piperine), ginger (gingerols, shogaols, and zingerone), and mustard (allyl isothiocyanate). Individual variability in responses to different spices, doses, and modes of delivery can possibly hamper identification of the potential health effects of spice ingestion.
The present study was conducted to a) generate suprathreshold dose-response functions for multiple qualities evoked by capsaicin across a wide range of concentrations, and b) revisit how intensity ratings and liking may differ as a function of self reported intake. Individuals rated eight samples of capsaicin for perceived burn and bitterness, as well as disliking/liking. Measures of reported preference for chili peppers, chili intake frequency, prior experience and personality measures were also assessed. Here, we confirm prior findings showing that burn in the laboratory differs with reported chili intake, with infrequent consumers reporting more burn. We extend these findings by exploring how capsaicin perception varies by reported liking, and measures of variety seeking. We also address the question of whether differences in burn ratings may potentially be an artifact of differential scale usage across groups due to prior experience, and not chronic desensitization, as is typically assumed. By using generalized scaling methods and recalled sensations, we conclude the differences observed here and elsewhere are not likely due to differences in how participants use rating scales.
Two different strategies for investigating individual differences among consumers in choice experiments using the Mixed Logit Model are compared. The study is based on a consumer study of iced coffees in Norway. Consumers (n = 102) performed a choice task of twenty different iced coffee profiles varying in coffee type, production origin, calorie content and price following an orthogonal design. Consumer attributes, such as socio-demographics, attitudes and habits, were also collected. Choice data were first analyzed using the Mixed Logit Model and then two different approaches were adopted for investigating consumer attributes. The first strategy, called one-step strategy, includes the consumer attributes directly in the Mixed Logit Model. The second strategy, called multi-step strategy, combines different methods of analysis such as Mixed Logit Model based on the design factors only, followed by Principal Component Analysis and Partial Least Squares regression to study consumer attributes. The two approaches are compared in terms of data analysis methodologies,outcomes, practical issues, user friendliness, and interpretation. Overall, we think the multi-step strategy is the one to be preferred in most practical applications because of its flexibility and stronger exploratory capabilities.
People vary in their habitual diet and also in their chemosensory abilities. In this study, we examined whether consumption of a Western-style diet, rich in saturated fat and added sugar, is associated with either poorer or different patterns of chemosensory perception, relative to people who consume a healthier diet. Participants were selected based on a food frequency questionnaire, which established whether they were likely to consume a diet either higher or lower in saturated fat and added sugar. Eighty-seven participants were tested for olfactory ability (threshold, discrimination, and identification), gustatory ability (PROP sensitivity, taste intensity, quality, and hedonics), and flavor processing (using dairy fat-sugar-odor mixtures). A Western-style diet was associated with poorer odor identification ability, greater PROP sensitivity, poorer fat discrimination, different patterns of sweetness taste enhancement, and hedonic differences in taste and flavor perception. No differences were evident for odor discrimination or threshold, in perception of taste intensity/quality (excluding PROP) or the ability of fats to affect flavor perception. The significant relationships were of small to moderate effect size, and would be expected to work against consuming a healthier diet. The discussion focuses on whether these diet-related differences precede adoption of a Western-style diet and/or are a consequence of it.
Taste perception and food preferences are influenced by a variety of factors, including personality characteristics. The aims of this study were to examine the role of personality characteristics, such as alexithymia (a personality construct characterized by inability to identify, describe, and work with one's own feelings), in: 1) taste responses to the bitter genetic taste-marker PROP and 2) food liking. We studied 649 healthy subjects residing in six genetically-isolated villages of Northeast Italy. Data on PROP taste responsiveness, food liking, personality characteristics and TAS2R28 genotypes were collected.
This paper describes the development of a Sensory-Diet database for understanding sensory drivers of food choice and how sensory characteristics influence food intake. Using an Australian children's national nutrition survey, foods were selected as representing the diet based upon frequency, food grouping, nutritional and/or sensory differences. Foods (377) were evaluated by a trained sensory panel for five basic tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salt and umami), basic textures (hardness, cohesiveness of mass, moistness and fatty mouthfeel) and flavour intensity. A systematic methodology was developed to then assign the sensory values of the tested foods to all foods across the food composition database (3758 foods).Relationships between dietary sensory characteristics and composition were explored. Principal component analysis found diets were largely explained by a salty-sweet dimension in terms of flavour/taste and by cohesiveness, moistness and fatty mouthfeel in terms of texture. For foods evaluated by the trained sensory panel, significant correlations included those between sugar and sweetness; fat and fatty mouthfeel; sodium and salty and umami taste, and protein with salty taste. Across the diet, these correlations remained strong when applied to the entire food composition database with the exception of sodium and salty taste. In this case the relationship no longer held in more complex foods. The Sensory-Diet tool is the first published method for applying food sensory characteristics to a composition database to facilitate investigation of sensory characteristics, food composition and diet.
Background
The general population is not compliant with national dietary recommendations for promoting health and reducing chronic disease risk. While rising obesity rates suggest that the majority of the population is overconsuming, many individuals affected with either acute or chronic diseases struggle to maintain adequate dietary intake and are at high nutritional risk. Flavor is the primary driver of food intake; however, disliked flavors are a major barrier to consumer adherence with dietary recommendations for both groups. Spices that contribute to chemical burn—such as black pepper, garlic, ginger, mustard, oregano, red pepper, and wasabi—alter food flavors.
Purpose
This paper explores the role of these pungent spices in altering nutrient intake across the lifespan. The role of chemical burn in manipulating dietary intake in both diseased and healthy populations is discussed.
Application
Implications for using pungent spices to enhance compliance with dietary manipulations are described. Proposed functions of pungent spices are maintaining, preserving, and enhancing flavor to offset the reductions in liking and palatability that are associated with dietary modifications and disease status.
Bitter taste receptor genotypes may be associated with the perception of bitterness in berries, and different processing methods may be used to modify the flavor of berry products. The aims of the present study were to investigate the consumption frequency of lingonberries among TAS2R38 genotyped subjects ( n = 83) and to evaluate the sensory characteristics of different texture-modified lingonberry samples (subjects n = 12, samples n = 8). Reported intake of lingonberries varied with TAS2R38 genotype, with more bitter sensitive individuals consuming them less frequently. The flavor profile of lingonberries was modifiable by food structure. In particular, foam and/or emulsion structures decreased the perceived intensity of bitterness, astringency and sourness of lingonberry samples. Sweetness was significantly higher in heavy foamed jelly and foamed emulsion compared to pulp or foamed juice. In conclusion, new flavor and texture modification options should be investigated to increase the palatability and consumption of bitter tasting foods.
Until only a few decades ago, there was little interest in research about children as consumers. Today, the food market for ‘‘the small consumers’’ is continuously growing and many foods and beverages are developed specifically for this target group. Furthermore, a better understanding of children’s food preferences could help design strategies to reduce obesity and malnutrition. The present review examines the main research domains in which measurements of children’s food preferences are applied. It also gives an overview of the progress made during the last 15 years in the field of consumer testing with children, highlighting the need of investigating and using new methods in addition to existing ones. Attention is devoted to the choice of specific methods according to the child’s age.
Most of the studies published on childhood food neophobia rely on parents’ reports of their children’s degree of neophobia and not on children’s reports. Information about children’s food behavior obtained from questionnaires provided to the parents may be misleading because relying solely on parent’s reports underestimates the role of the child in the process. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a self-report measure of food neophobia designed for Italian primary school children by adapting the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) proposed by Pliner and Hobden in 1992. The Italian Child Food Neophobia Scale (ICFNS) consists of 8 items (4 neophobic and 4 neophilic). Simple and age-appropriate vocabulary was used, and items were slightly modified to describe situations likely to be familiar to children. The ICFNS was tested on a sample of 491 6- to 9-year-old Italian children. Internal consistency and test–retest reliability were satisfactory. External validity data showed that the ICFNS predicted both the children’s willingness to taste and liking of novel food. The result