Does the indoor thermal environment influence the dominant sensation in a functional beverage attribute?

Abstract

Different thermal environments can affect human productivity with repercussions on cognitive ability and physiological changes. However, the direct effect of room temperature on the sensations of food in the mouth during consumption is not yet well established. This study aimed to investigate the effect of indoor temperature on dominant sensations during intake of a beverage containing non-nutritive sweeteners. The temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) technique was used to evaluate seven functional beverages with different non-nutritive sweeteners. Sixty consumers participated in the test, attending 3 days of laboratory analysis with strictly controlled indoor temperatures (20, 24, and 26°C). The indoor temperature affected the TDS curves of four functional beverages, with emphasis on the colder environment, which accentuated the sensation of bitter taste in the samples sweetened with stevia and neohesperidin. In the warmer environment, a TDS peak of fruit flavor was observed for the sucrose-sweetened sample, while the neotamesweetened sample presented lower dominance rate for sweetness. The sensory performance of the samples sweetened with non-nutritive sweeteners, determined by the dominance rate of attributes, can change over time in different indoor temperatures.

Temporal sweet taste dominance according to adult body mass index classification

“…The consumer received the five samples, in a monadic way, in individual boxes; they were directed to put the sample in their mouth to start the test after the signal appearing on the cell phone screen. The test started when the consumer ingested the first sample, according to the methodology of a previous study (Lima et al., 2020), allowing 40 s for entering the dominant sensation. During the evaluation, the tasters selected the attribute considered dominant, among the established attribute options that they considered dominant, and were free to click on another option that best described their feeling in relation to the sample (Pineau et al., 2009).…”