People worldwide are eating fewer fruits and vegetables while increasing their intake of high-fat foods, leading to obesity and heart disease. Understanding food choices can promote healthier eating habits. Researchers have developed the TasteLQ, a questionnaire assessing taste preferences, culturally adapted for the local population. This tool helps explore associations between taste preferences, genetics, and health. It aims to inform public health strategies and personalized nutrition plans by linking taste preferences to actual food consumption patterns.
There is a worrying trend in many parts of the world. People are eating less fruit and vegetables while increasing their intake of high-fat foods. This shift in dietary habits is contributing to a rise in health problems, including obesity and heart disease. Understanding why people make certain food choices can help to address these problems and promote healthier eating habits. However, food is more than just fuel for our bodies; it is a complex mix of flavours and sensations that influence what we like to eat.
“Our choices are driven by how much we enjoy basic tastes such as sweet, salty and bitter as well as the creamy texture of fats. Existing nutritional assessment tools to measure taste preferences have some limitations, and we needed an instrument for our research that could be culturally adapted for the Danish population – as well as other places. This is what we set out to do,” explains PhD Sara Haydar from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Two oral sensations
Taste detection begins when taste receptors in the gustatory system are stimulated. These receptors send signals to the brain, where taste sensations are perceived. Additionally, activating these receptors influences the release of hormones such as glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), affecting appetite.
“Although taste perception is biologically driven, taste preference is a subjective choice influenced by internal and external factors. Historically, taste has guided humans to consume nutritious foods. However, today, exposure to highly palatable and energy-dense foods has been linked to an increased risk of metabolic diseases. This shift underscores the importance of understanding taste preferences and dietary habits to develop personalised nutritional interventions.”
Over the years, significant efforts have been made to develop methods, and various food-liking questionnaires already exist, including PrefQuest, a questionnaire that measures recalled liking for sweet, salt and fat in population-based studies.
“In this study, we aimed to develop and validate a rapid, easy-to-use questionnaire suitable for large-scale epidemiological studies. It was designed to assess liking of the five basic tastes – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami – along with fat sensation and two oral sensations – such as the dry feeling of astringency or the heat of pungency.”
Challenging
First and foremost, the new questionnaire – TasteLQ – was culturally adapted to the population of Denmark. Taste preferences are shaped by a combination of genetics, environment, psychological factors and cultural background. The initial step involved selecting food items reflecting Danish culinary culture.
“The chosen items needed to accurately represent specific taste and sensation categories. This selection process was guided by an expert panel specialising in nutrition and sensory science. We opted for single food items rather than complex dishes.”
Developing and validating TasteLQ posed challenges.
“It was challenging, and we tried to validate the questionnaire with direct taste tests at the Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen. Individuals sat in booths to minimise any bias in their ratings. It is also challenging because people have their own experience with each food item. For example, tasting lemon alone is not the same as adding lemon to a meal,” explains Sara Haydar.
She explains another challenge. Sometimes the item tasted does not represent the food product the individual is used to.
“For example, people might be used to a certain type of coffee, and the coffee served might be different. Sensory analysis has limitations because it cannot represent the product the individual is used to, but it can give some idea about the correlation between liking scores and questionnaire answers.”
Items were excluded
To make sure the respondents picked the right items, the researchers asked an expert panel to rate how important each item was.
“If an item got a low score, meaning it was not considered important enough, we either changed it to make it better or removed it altogether,” explains Sara Haydar.
Following this, a taste intensity was evaluated. An example of the items included was chocolate spread (such as Nutella) for the sweet-fatty category. Items with low familiarity among participants were excluded.
“The participants rated the intensity of various tastes and sensations for each food item. We asked them to rate the intensity of each basic taste for these food items and found items representing sweet, salty, bitter, umami and sour tastes as well as astringency and pungency sensations by performing cluster analysis,” elaborates Sara Haydar.
Time and memory issues
Participants considered TasteLQ clear and easy to understand, with most completing it in about 7.6 minutes. To test the validity of the questionnaire, the researcher compared it with traditional direct tasting.
“The hedonic test involves direct tasting of selected items, but items such as soy sauce and chili displayed lower agreement because of differences in the tasting context. However, in general, the tasting showed reasonable agreement with the questionnaire scores, which makes it very useful for large-scale studies that do not enable direct tasting.”
By providing a reliable and culturally tailored tool for assessing taste preferences, TasteLQ can inform public health strategies and personalised nutrition plans.
“The primary motivation was to develop this questionnaire measuring taste preferences adapted for the Danish population overcoming existing limitations, such as memory issues and being time-consuming. The second motivation was to conduct a genetic study to identify genes associated with taste liking, which requires a valid measurement tool.”
A versatile tool
Food preferences are influenced by environmental, psychological and cultural factors but also genetics. The researchers hope that the new questionnaire can be used to explore associations between taste-liking phenotypes, genetics, lifestyle risk factors and metabolic outcomes. A genetic study using TasteLQ data is already underway.
“We collected data from about 7,000 individuals and ran a genome-wide association study for each basic taste. For future research, it would be interesting to examine groups of individuals based on taste preferences and to correlate this with cardiometabolic markers and food intake. This can give information about food choice and correlate it with health outcomes.”
Sara Haydar also hopes that future studies could expand TasteLQ to other populations, adapting it to different culinary cultures. Additionally, integrating dietary intake data could further validate the questionnaire by linking taste preferences to actual food consumption patterns.
“The adaptability of TasteLQ makes it a versatile tool. It can be modified for use in different cultural contexts, enhancing its utility in global research,” concludes Haydar.
