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Biomedical subjects

S Issanchou

Publications and source records attributed to S Issanchou.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Odour and taste sensitivity is associated with body weight and extent of misreporting of body weight.

BACKGROUND: Sensory factors are important determinants of appetite and food choices but little is known about the relationship between body weight and sensory capabilities. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between measured body weights, misreporting of body weight and sensory capabilities. DESIGN: In a cross-sectional sensory study, body weight was assessed by measured and self-reported body weight in healthy men (n=130) and women (n=181). Sensory capabilities were assessed as odour detection and identification, and detection for salty, sweet, sour and bitter taste. RESULTS: Odour detection, odour identification and taste perception scores were lower in subjects with a BMI >or=28 kg/m(2) than in subjects with a BMI <28 kg/m(2) in the age group <65 years whereas in subjects >or=65 years scores were higher in subjects with a BMI >or=28 kg/m(2) than in subjects with a BMI <28 kg/m(2) (BMI*age group: P=0.015, 0.053 and 0.015, respectively). Independent of age, scores were highest in under reporters of body weight (P=0.008, 0.001 and 0.017). Differences in taste perception could be attributed to sour (P=0.015) and bitter (P=0.026) perception, but not to salty or sweet perception. CONCLUSION: Relationship between sensory capabilities and body mass is age dependent. Compared to overweight subjects, the sensory capabilities of normal weight individuals appear to be higher (<65 years) and lower (>or=65 years). At any age, however, subjects who under reported their body weight show higher sensory capabilities.

Adult↗

[Gustatory perceptions in children].

As soon as the end of gestation, the gustatory system is stimulated by the taste-active compounds carried by the amniotic fluid and its maturation continues until mid-childhood. Facial expressions and relative ingestion methods show that the newborn can discriminate the various taste qualities (bitter, salty, sour, sweet and umami). The range of individual responses is wide. Neonatal reactions to sweet and umami are generally considered to express pleasure. The bitter and sour stimulations lead to hedonically negative reactions. The response to salt taste is less characteristic. Overall, the attraction towards sweet and the rejection of bitter and sour tastes become more pronounced during childhood but tend to decrease in adult life. The early attraction to sweetness is reinforced by exposure to sweet stimulations. With age, the response to salt evolves towards attraction which intensity is dependent on the context and on postnatal exposures to salt. The link between gustatory sensitivity to sweet, salty and sour stimuli and food preferences is far from being clear; the sensitivity to bitter taste better explains the rejection of bitter foods, such as vegetables for instance. The development of gustatory perceptions partly depends upon experience. A better knowledge of the role of experience could help to improve the orientation and the efficacy of nutritionally-oriented food education strategies.

Adolescent↗

Measurements of consumer attitudes and their influence on food choice and acceptability (AIR-CAT).

A changing European food market demands insight into consumer attitudes and their influence on food choice and acceptability. This multidisciplinary area needs to bring together scientists from all regions of Europe and with very different scientific backgrounds. The primary objectives of this concerted action have been: to establish a base with state of the art methods for measurements of consumer attitudes; to review and test existing methods in practical applications in collaboration with European food industries; to perform comparative studies between laboratories on food products, where attitudes play different roles for consumer behaviour in the community countries, such as transgenic foods, irradiated foods, foods with different additives, declarations and process technologies, foods with different origin declarations, ecological foods and foods with strong health connotations (such as high-fat foods). The members of the action have published more than 130 publications related to aspects of how consumer attitudes can be measured and how food choice behaviour is related to acceptability, during the last four years. Studies have been conducted in relation to methodological aspects as well as particular studies related to specific food items and regions for food production. The paper will give a brief selection of relevant results from experiments reported through the action. During 2001 a textbook called "Food, People and Society, in a European Perspective", will be published. The book was initiated during the action and is later supported with additional authors. Altogether 29 chapters will cover the whole spectrum of topics from consumer food choice and acceptability to market perspectives and risk analysis.

Choice Behavior↗

Odor intensity evaluation in gas chromatography-olfactometry by finger span method.

This paper describes the potential of evaluating odor intensities in a gas chromatographic effluent by cross-modality matching with the finger span (GC-O-FSCM). A simple prototype is described that allows the precise measurement and acquisition of the distance between the thumb and another finger during the analysis. The stimulation of panelists at the sniffing port with ethyl butyrate shows a log-log relation between peak height values obtained from finger span and stimulus concentrations. It also shows that all panelists are able to perform this task but with different precision, which is used to select them. A triplicate evaluation by GC-O-FSCM of the intensity of flavor constituents in synthetic solutions shows that a four-member panel is perfectly able to determine most of the characteristics of the solutions and to create a finger span multidimensional space highly correlated with the theoretical intensity space.

Adult↗

Effects of panel experience on olfactory memory performance: influence of stimuli familiarity and labeling ability of subjects.

This work attempted to define the impact of panel experience on olfactory memory performance by comparing scores in an odor recognition task obtained from a highly trained descriptive panel (17 subjects) and a naive one (33 subjects with no experience in sensory analysis). During the inspection phase, 16 odorants were presented monadically to subjects for familiarity rating and a written description. The recognition session was planned 7 days later with 32 odorants (including the 16 of the target set). Subjects also described the odor of the stimuli. The memory performance of each panel was estimated by the mean value of individual d' (index of detectability). Training of the descriptive panel did not enhance the olfactory memory ability, which strengthened the well-established idea that odor memory is closely linked to personal experience of the subject with the stimuli. However, odor recognition performances were improved by a precise and consistent answer at the encoding task: for both groups, subjects performed better when stimuli were precisely labeled and consistently used. Trained subjects were more accurate when describing than naive ones, whatever the degree of familiarity. Panel experience allowed trained subjects to verbalize their perception especially accurately when stimuli were familiar.

Adolescent↗

Influence of label and location of testing on acceptability of cream cheese varying in fat content.

The acceptability of low-, medium- and high-fat versions of a cream cheese to consumers was measured in different conditions by rating overall distance from ideal. The influence of label (unlabelled vs. commercial package) differed according to the cream cheese fat-level habits of the assessors and to the fat level of the product. In labelled testing, high-fat cream cheese was more highly accepted by high- and medium-fat users and low-fat cream cheese seemed to be further from ideal for high-fat users. The location of testing (home vs. laboratory) affected the rating of only the high-fat product: consumers are more severe on it at home than in the laboratory.

Cheese↗