Emotional responses to sweet foods according to sweet liker status

Abstract

Sweetness is usually associated with positive affect, but it is known that there are systematic individual variations in the degree of pleasantness of sweet tastes. These variations are thought to be important in determining food preferences. The objectives of this study were to classify people according to sweet liker status, and to examine how they expressed emotions to foods varying in sweetness. The samples used in the study were four commercial products: two beverages (OD and MJ) and two biscuits (WB and CB), each pair differing in sweetness. Subjects were asked to rate their liking for the samples and any emotions elicited by them immediately after they consumed each of the products. Sweet likers (SL) and sweet dislikers (SD) were selected by hierarchical cluster analysis based on hedonic responses to the five concentrations of sucrose solution. SL expressed strong positive emotions in response to the CB and MJ, which were both highly sweet and highly liked by SL. However, they expressed relatively strong negative emotions to the far less sweet OD. In contrast, SD expressed relatively strong positive emotions to WB and MJ which were both liked, while they neither were positive about, nor liked, CB. This study clearly shows that emotional responses are subject to similar individual variations to sweet foods as are measures of liking. In turn, sweet liker status can be shown to be associated with varied emotional states elicited by foods varying in sweetness. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd