Taste responses to chocolate pudding with different sucrose concentrations through physiological and explicit self-reported measures

The past few decades have seen significant methodological and theoretical change within sensory science, including in food sciences. The physiological reaction to the Autonomous Nervous System (ANS) provides insightful information in interpreting consumers’ sensory and affective reactions. In this regard, we investigated how explicit responses of liking and perceived intensity of sensory features (sweet, bitter, and astringency) and implicit objective physiological responses of Heart Rate (HR) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) are modulated when varying the sweetness (sucrose concentration with 38; 83; 119; 233 g/kg) level in a cocoa-based product (dark chocolate pudding) and their relationship. The demographic effects on responses were also investigated. Results showed the effects of the sucrose concentration levels on liking and perceived intensity of all the sensory characteristics and on HR responses, which highlighted a significant effect of the sucrose concentration level. As regards the relationship between variables, a significant positive effect was found for the sucrose concentration level 3, where an increase in HR leads to an increase in liking; for the perceived bitterness, a significant positive effect of HR for the sucrose concentration level 1; and for the perceived astringent, a significant positive effect of HR for the sucrose concentration level 2. While we found no significant main effect of gender on our dependent variables, the results highlight a significant main effect of age, increasing the adult population responses. The present research helps to understand better the relationship between explicit and implicit sensory study variables with foods. Furthermore, it has managerial applications for chocolate product developers. The level of sweetness that might be optimal to satisfy at the explicit level (liking) and the implicit level (HR or emotional valence) is identified.