Sensory Aspects of Food Affect Consumer Perceptions and Food Choices

David B. Schmidt and Andrew P. Benson

Introduction

Each of us has a personal range of foods we enjoy. Our preferences for some foods over others result from a complex interplay among many factors such as genetics, age, early food experiences, ethnic customs, pleasantness of surroundings when trying a new food and physiological reactions to a food.

One thing is clear. The flavor of foods is a most compelling influence in shaping our food choices.

Surveys by the International Food Information Council (IFIC 2009a) and the IFIC Foundation (IFIC Foundation 2009) have consistently ranked taste as the most important factor for consumers in selecting foods and beverages. Other important factors and influences include price, healthfulness and convenience.

In the Food Marketing Institute’s Trends in the United States (FMI 2009), consumers have consistently ranked taste as one of the principal reasons for selecting food. In recent years, price has become an increasingly important factor in determining where consumers shop for their food and beverages.

According to The American Dietetic Association’s Nutrition Trends Survey (ADA 2008), while a large proportion of consumers view diet, nutrition and exercise as “very important”, 73% of consumers don’t do more to achieve a balanced diet because they “don’t want to give up the foods I like.”

More to Taste than Meets the Tongue

What we commonly call the “taste” of food is really “flavor,” which largely results from the interaction between the senses of taste and smell. Other sensations from foods (think of the burn of a hot pepper, the bite of a peppermint or the fizz of a carbonated drink), as well as texture, temperature and appearance all add to the flavor experience.

As much as 80% of what we perceive as “taste” is actually smell. Humans can discern about twenty thousand different odors and ten intensities of each.

Smell occurs when odors reach olfactory receptors in the nasal cavity via two routes: inhalation through the nostrils and through the back of the mouth as we chew and swallow.

True taste occurs on the tongue. We are born with ten thousand taste buds located on the back, sides, and tip of the tongue, on the palate, and in the throat. When taste receptor cells within the taste buds are excited by chemical stimuli, they detect five primary sensations: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and “umami,” the savory taste of glutamate found in protein foods and monosodium glutamate (MSG).

Taste Changes Through the Ages

Our very first flavor experiences are sweet ones. A variety of tastes and odors are even transmitted through the amniotic fluid to the fetus.

Unborn infants appear to detect sweetness and newborns clearly sense and enjoy sweet tastes. Infants seem to experience the other primary tastes to varying degrees. The ability to detect bitter, salty, and umami tastes continues to develop throughout the first few months of life.

The sour taste is at least somewhat developed at birth, but it’s not clear whether further changes occur as infants get older. Breast-fed infants receive early exposure to a variety of flavors because breast milk carries the flavor of foods and spices eaten by the mother. Whether these and other early taste experiences affect food preferences later in life is the subject of ongoing research.

At about age 60, even healthy people begin to experience a modest decline in taste and more dramatic declines in smell. Taste and smell changes in the elderly result from normal aging, medications, certain illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, radiation therapy and even environmental factors such as pollution.

Super Tasters ̶ a Bitterly Sensitive Bunch

When your child, client or co-worker balks at eating spinach, broccoli or Brussels sprouts, chalk it up to, well, bad taste. You may be dealing with a “super taster” whose taste buds are highly tuned in to ̶ and turned off by ̶ bitter compounds found in foods such as pungent vegetables, grapefruit juice, wine, green tea and espresso.

Interestingly, about 25% of the population are genetically programmed to be super tasters who sharply detect bitter compounds in food. Half the population detects these compounds to some degree, and another 25% don’t detect them at all.

Ironically, many of these bitter substances are disease-fighting phytochemicals that may be beneficial to health. Super tasters can help the vegetables go down and optimise nutrient value by adding a bit of butter or oil to their dish. Fat improves the flavor of vegetables by masking the bitter taste and helps promote absorption of fat-soluble phytochemicals such as the β-carotene in carrots, the lycopene in tomatoes, and the lutein in spinach.

Tasteful Recommendations

Restating what might seem like the obvious, if a food doesn’t taste good people aren’t likely to eat it. Helping consumers to eat a balanced diet involves the art of balancing nutrition advice with health needs, lifestyle factors and taste preferences. Keeping food pleasure at the forefront is an essential ingredient for lasting success.

Taste Leads the List of Factors Influencing Food and Beverage Purchasing Decisions

As part of the IFIC Foundation’s 2009 Food and Health Survey: Consumer Attitudes toward Food, Nutrition and Health, consumers were asked about the impact that convenience, healthfulness, price and taste had on their decisions to buy food and beverages (IFIC Foundation 2009). The 2009 survey found that taste was of paramount importance, with 87% of consumers ranking taste as important, an increase over the 2008 level of 84%. Price has continued to increase in importance as a purchasing factor, with 74% rating price as an important factor in 2009, compared to 64% in 2006. This is most likely a reaction to the impact of the global economic crisis.

Other factors considered as influential in purchasing decisions included healthfulness (61%) and convenience (52%).

These findings are supported by separate research commissioned by IFIC in 2009 regarding consumer perceptions of sodium (IFIC 2009b). Thirty-nine percent of US consumers felt that low or reduced sodium products “do not taste as good.” In comparison, 16% of consumers were of the opinion that low or reduced sodium products “taste as good” or that their “taste is fine.”

Recognising that perceptions of taste may be subject to change over time, 61% of consumers either agreed or strongly agreed that “If you cut down on the amount of salt you eat, your preference for the taste of salt will change.” Importantly, 48% of consumers reported that they would think more highly of a product if it were advertised as “low sodium.”

Consumers Look to Functional Benefits from Food but Not at the Expense of Taste

According to the 2009 IFIC Functional Foods for Health Consumer Trending Survey, the great majority of Americans believe that food can provide benefits beyond basic nutrition, and are interested in how certain foods or food components can improve or maintain their health (IFIC 2009a). Today, many people can identify a specific food and/or food component and its associated health benefits such as calcium and bone health, omega-3 fatty acids and heart health.

Of course, fortified foods have to meet strict regulatory standards. However, as food has to taste good and be appealing to consumers, food fortification is often self limiting. If a fortified food does not taste the same or better than the unfortified version, then the product is not likely to succeed in the marketplace.

No matter how healthful a food is, taste is ultimately a much more important factor influencing food and beverage purchasing decisions.

References

American Dietetic Association (2008) Nutrition and You: Trends 2008 http://www.eatright.org/Media/content.aspx?id=7639&terms=nutrition+trends+survey

Food Marketing Institute (2009) Grocery Shoppers Trends 2009. http://www.fmi.org/news_releases/index.cfm?fuseaction=mediatext&id=1064

International Food Information Council (2009a) Functional Foods/Foods for Health Consumer Trending Survey. http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail.aspx?topic=2009_Functional_Foods_Foods_For_Health_Consumer_Trending_Survey_Executive_Summary

International Food Information Council (2009b) Consumer Sodium Research: Concern, Perceptions and Action. http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail.aspx?topic=Consumer_Sodium_Research_Concern_Perceptions_and_Action

International Food Information Council Foundation (2009) Food and Health Survey: Consumer Attitudes Toward Food Nutrition and Health. http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail/2009_Food_Health_Survey_Consumer_Attitudes_toward_Food_Nutrition_and_Health.aspx

David B. Schmidt is the President and CEO of the International Food Information Council (IFIC) and the IFIC Foundation (E-mail: schmidt@ific.org) and Andrew P. Benson is the Vice President, International Relations of IFIC (E-mail: benson@ific.org), Suite 430, 1100 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036, USA; Website: http://foodinsight.org