Children and adults' sensory and hedonic perception of added sugar reduction in grape nectar

Children's reaction to sugar reduced dairy desserts in the context of the implementation of nutritional warning labels: An exploratory study

The aim of the present work was to explore children's reaction to sugar reduction in the context of the implementation of nutritional warnings in Uruguay. The study was composed of two sessions involving three evaluation conditions: tasting without package information, package evaluation without tasting, and tasting with package information. A total of 122 children, ages ranging between 6 and 13 years old (47% girls) were involved in the study. In the first session, children's hedonic and emotional response to a regular and a sugar-reduced chocolate dairy dessert (without other sweeteners) was evaluated. In the second session, children first evaluated their expected liking, emotional associations and choice of packages differing in the presence of warning labels for excessive sugar content and cartoon character (2x2 design). Finally, they tasted the selected sample in the presence of the package and evaluated their liking, emotional associations, and intention to re-taste it. Although sugar reduction led to a significant reduction in overall liking, the dessert with 40% sugar reduction showed a mean overall score of 6.5 in a 9-point hedonic scale and was described using positive emoji (, , ). When the desserts were tasted with package information, no significant differences in the expected overall liking of the regular and sugar-reduced dessert were found. Regarding the effect of packaging elements, the presence of a warning label highlighting excessive content of sugar did not have a significant effect on children's choice. Instead, children's choices were defined by the presence of a cartoon character. Results from the present work provide additional evidence about the feasibility of reducing the sugar content and sweetness of dairy products targeted at children and stress the need to regulate the use of cartoon characters on products with an unfavorable nutritional profile. Methodological recommendations for sensory and consumer research with children are also discussed.

Less Sugar and More Whole Grains in Infant Cereals: A Sensory Acceptability Experiment With Infants and Their Parents

There is an urgent need to reduce sugar intake in early childhood. Commercial infant cereals are among the first solid foods introduced to infants at the beginning of the complementary feeding period in most countries. The aim of this study was to examine infants' overall acceptability of low-sugar complementary cereals. To do so, a between-subjects experimental study with 165 parents and their infants aged 6-24 months was conducted where one group tested a high-sugar refined cereal (21 g/100 g), and the other a low-sugar cereal (<1 g/100 g) with 50% of whole grain, which represented a 95.2% decrease in sugar content. We found no significant differences between the two groups in terms of infants' overall acceptability (infant's reaction, estimated intake and relative intake). Importantly, infants' reactions to high- and low-sugar cereals were not influenced by the time that infants had been consuming sweet cereals (15-25% sugar) before the experiment took place. In addition, parent's overall liking and sensory evaluation (sweetness, color, taste, texture, and aroma) was positive and very similar in both groups. Overall, our findings show that it is feasible to reduce sugar content in infant cereals without sacrificing its sensory acceptability by infants and their parents. This represents a good opportunity for the infant food industry to adhere to current healthy and sustainable demands of lowering the sugar intake leading to important benefits in infants' health, without compromising competitiveness in the market.

Yuck, This Biscuit Looks Lumpy! Neophobic Levels and Cultural Differences Drive Children's Check-All-That-Apply (CATA) Descriptions and Preferences for High-Fibre Biscuits

Food neophobia influences food choice in school-aged children. However, little is known about how children with different degrees of food neophobia perceive food and to what extent different sensory attributes drive their liking. This paper explores liking and sensory perception of fibre-rich biscuits in school-aged children (n = 509, age 9–12 years) with different degrees of food neophobia and from five different European countries (Finland, Italy, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom). Children tasted and rated their liking of eight commercial biscuits and performed a Check-All-That-Apply task to describe the samples and further completed a Food Neophobia Scale. Children with a higher degree of neophobia displayed a lower liking for all tasted biscuits (p < 0.001). Cross-cultural differences in liking also appeared (p < 0.001). A negative correlation was found between degree of neophobia and the number of CATA-terms used to describe the samples (r = −0.116, p = 0.009). Penalty analysis showed that degree of food neophobia also affected drivers of biscuit liking, where particularly appearance terms were drivers of disliking for neophobic children. Cross-cultural differences in drivers of liking and disliking were particularly salient for texture attributes. Further research should explore if optimizing appearance attributes could be a way to increase liking of fibre-rich foods in neophobic children.