Taste adaptation during the eating of sweetened yogurt

Taste adaptation, a gradual decline of taste intensity with prolonged stimu lation, is frequently observed in laboratory experiments. However, during n ormal eating the taste of food does not seem to decrease or disappear. Duri ng eating, the presence of saliva, the interactions between tastants and od orants, and mouth movements can influence the time course of taste intensit y. Therefore, results from standard laboratory adaptation experiments about adaptation seem of limited relevance to the prediction of the time course of taste intensity when eating real foods. We studied whether taste adaptat ion occurs when subjects eat yogurt, sweetened with two concentrations of s ucrose (3.75 and 7.5%). In addition, we examined whether this adaptation is related to taste adaptation measured with a filter paper method. During th e eating of yogurt, sweetness intensity declined with time, whereas sournes s intensity did not. As expected, taste adaptation in the "yogurt task" was only slightly correlated to adaptation measured with filter paper. (C) 200 0 Academic Press.