LAUSR

Objectives To investigate the association between taste perception for sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami and food category intakes. We hypothesized that greater taste perception will be inversely associated with the amount consumed. Methods A cross-sectional baseline analysis was performed on community-dwelling overweight adults with metabolic syndrome (N = 367, 55-75y) from the PREDIMED-PLUS Trial, University of Valencia Center, Spain. Taste perception was determined by challenging subjects with standard solutions of sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami (400 mM sucrose, 200 mM NaCl, 34 mM citric acid, 5.6 mM phenylthiocarbamide (PTC), 200 mM monopotassium glutamate, respectively) and evaluated on a 0-5 scale. Outcomes included intake (servings/week) of food categories derived from a validated food frequency questionnaire: fruit (citrus/non-citrus/nuts), vegetables (cruciferous/non-cruciferous), protein (eggs/fish[fresh/shell/canned]/meat[processed/unprocessed]), grains (legumes/refined/whole), dairy (regular/low- & no-fat) and oils (extra virgin olive (EVOO)/olive/vegetable). Multivariable linear regression models were used to assess associations of perception for each taste and consumption of each food category (untransformed or transformed, for normality). Results After controlling for age, sex, diabetes, smoking, physical activity and energy intake, sweet was inversely associated with vegetables (β = -1.1; 95% CI = [-2.0, -0.2]), particularly non-cruciferous (β = -1.0; P = 0.02), and citrus fruit (β = -0.5; P < 0.01); salt was positively associated with fruit (β = 1.0; 95% CI = [0.04, 1.9]), particularly non-citrus (β = 0.6; P = 0.03), and olive oil (β = 1.1; P = 0.02) but negatively associated with EVOO (β = -1.4; P = 0.02); sour was positively associated with cruciferous vegetables (β = 0.1; P = 0.04); bitter was inversely associated with canned fish (β = -0.1; P = 0.03); and umami was positively associated with non-cruciferous vegetables (β = 0.7; P = 0.04) and inversely associated with regular dairy (β = -0.4; P = 0.04). Conclusions Our hypothesis was rejected. Taste perception for sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami differentially affected intake of various food categories; suggesting a role of taste perception in diet quality, energy balance and diet-related chronic diseases. Funding Sources This study was funded by the ARS/USDA, and the Spanish Ministry of Health (Instituto de Salud Carlos III), SAF2016-80,532-R, and the Generalitat Valenciana.