Development of a sensory tool to assess overall liking for the fatty, salty and sweet sensations

Understanding the origin of the overconsumption of too high levels of sucrose, sodium chloride and lipidsin foods raises the question of the influence of the hedonics for these sensations. To better understandthis relationship, a sensory tool that enables measurement of liking towards sweet, salty or fatty sensationsis required. This liking towards a sensation has to be understood as an overall attractiveness of thesensation. Instruments already existing were unsatisfactory as including a limited number of foods notrepresentative of the overall sensation.A set of hedonic tests, named PrefSens, was developed to measure an overall liking for fatty, salty orsweet sensations. Each test consisted in the rating on a 9-point hedonic scale of a food product at 5 differentlevels of lipids, sodium chloride or sucrose. To build the PrefSens test, a total of 144 food rangeswere tested during the development step (n = 341 subjects) including various food categories, matricesand serving temperatures. Then, based on the technical feasibility and ability to discriminate, 32 foodranges were selected (10 for fatty, 10 for salty and 12 for sweet). The perceived intensity of fatty, saltyor sweet ‘‘sensations” of these selected foods was evaluated by a trained panel (n = 12) usingSpectrum scales. During the application study, the hedonic evaluation of the selected foods was assessedin 6 tasting sessions by 567 subjects over 8 laboratories spread out in France. For each subject and eachproduct, hedonic ratings (y) were fitted versus the level of fatty, sweet or salty (x) in a quadratic regression,from which the predicted optimal level (Lpref) was derived based on the x-coordinate of the parabola’smaximum weighted by the correlation coefficient between observed and predicted data. Theoverall liking score for fatty, salty or sweet sensations was the average Lpref over the compounding foodranges.The sensory profile showed that within each sensation the mean perceived intensity significantlyincreased in a linear manner with the nutrient level. An exception was for the two lowest levels of lipidswhich were not significantly perceived differently. Concomitantly, the overall liking scores followed aninverted U-shape centered on the middle level of lipids, sodium chloride or sucrose. The distributionwas close to normality. Internal validity and consistency of the items compounding the sensations offatty, salty or sweet were demonstrated. PrefSens is an internally valid and original tool that can beapplied to a population sample in order to better understand the determinants of dietary behaviors