CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS OF JAPANESE AND AUSTRALIAN RESPONSES TO MANIPULATIONS OF SOURNESS, SALTINESS AND BITTERNESS IN FOODS

Panels of Japanese and Australian consumers evaluated four foods in wh ich tastant levels had been manipulated to produce four samples of eac h food. The foods (and tastants) mere: orange juice (citric acid); gra pefruit juice (caffeine); salad dressing (citric acid); and cornflakes (sodium chloride). The panels gave ratings of intensity, liking, and just right for the manipulated taste, and overall liking for all sampl es. lit addition, a variety of other sensory attributes were rated. Th ere were no cross-cultural differences in the perception of the manipu lated taste intensity in any of the foods. For hedonic ratings, the pa tterns of response to increasing taste intensities varied according to food and culture. However, there was good cross-cultural agreement re garding the optimal level of tastant for each food. Multiple regressio ns revealed a common core of attributes that explained the variance of overall liking, although, for each food, there were differences betwe en the Japanese and Australians in which additional attributes contrib uted to the best fit models. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.