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Description
Humans are drawn to consume sweet drinks and foods, largely because sweetness is associated with rewarding properties and high energy content. In the modern diet, an array of food and drink options containing sugars is highly accessible, and the intake of sugar has paralleled the rising prevalence of obesity. Eating is regulated by homeostatic processes and reward mechanisms in the brain, and these reward processes are an important component in the interplay between taste, food consumption, and weight gain. While sweetness is preferred universally, the degree of liking and enjoyment for sweet tastes tends to vary. Traditionally, studies have explored hedonic evaluation of sucrose. Individuals have been generally classified into two groups, whereby sweet likers are defined as those individuals preferring highly concentrated sucrose solutions, and sweet non-likers are defined as individuals who prefer lower concentrations of sucrose. As a means of weight control, nonnutritive sweeteners have been introduced as a way to maintain desired sweet taste while reducing caloric content. A recent consumer trend is the preference for foods derived from natural resources that lack artificial components. Rebaudioside A, more commonly referred to as stevia, is a natural, nonnutritive sweetener that has been made available to the public. Stevia is known to exhibit a sweetness quality similar to sucrose at lower concentrations, but also evoke some bitterness at higher concentrations. It is unknown whether sweet liking for sucrose generalizes to liking for stevia. Understanding taste perception of stevia may contribute to the understanding of sweet liking, as well as the usefulness of stevia as a sugar substitute. Therefore, the aims of the current study were to investigate the relationship between liking and hedonic ratings for the sweetener, stevia, in relation to sucrose. The perception of stevia as a function of background (distilled water and citrus beverage), and weekly consumption of artificially sweetened beverages was also explored. Participants included 40 young adults, consisting of 20 stevia likers and 20 stevia non-likers. Participants were asked to give intensity and pleasantness ratings for sucrose and stevia taste solutions varying in concentration and background. Overall, the results suggested a significant relationship between stevia liking and sucrose liking, in which the majority of stevia likers also tended to be sucrose likers. Pleasantness ratings also significantly varied as a function of background, in which decreased hedonic ratings given by stevia non-likers in distilled water appeared to be mitigated in the citrus beverage solutions. Lastly, two moderately significant trends suggested that higher weekly consumption of artificially sweetened beverages was positively related to pleasantness ratings. Limiting sucrose in the modern diet continues to be an important research area for combating obesity and other serious health issues, and the results of the present study suggest stevia as a possible alternative to sucrose. The examination of psychophysical responses related to liking for sucrose and stevia also provide insight into taste perception and suggest liker status and beverage background as important factors to consider when assessing dietary substitutes.
