Consumers find many foods too sweet
New research from the Monell Center analyzed nearly 400,000 food reviews posted by Amazon customers to gain real-world insight into the food choices that people make.
New research from the Monell Center analyzed nearly 400,000 food reviews posted by Amazon customers to gain real-world insight into the food choices that people make. The findings reveal that many people find the foods in today's marketplace to be too sweet.
The study used data posted on an open-source data science site to examine 393,568 unique food reviews of 67,553 products posted by 256,043 Amazon customers over a 10-year period. Using a sophisticated statistical modeling program to identify words related to taste, texture, odor, spiciness, cost, health, and customer service, the scientists computed the number of reviews that mentioned each category.
"This is the first study of this scale to study food choice beyond the artificial constraints of the laboratory," said study lead author Danielle Reed, a behavioral geneticist at Monell. "Sweet was the most frequently mentioned taste quality and the reviewers definitively told us that human food is over-sweetened."
The focus on product over-sweetness was striking, as almost 1% of product reviews, regardless of food type, used the phrase "too sweet." When looking at reviews that referred to sweet taste, the researchers found that over-sweetness was mentioned 25 times more than under-sweetness. Saltiness was rarely mentioned, a somewhat surprising finding in light of public health concerns about excess salt consumption.
The findings illustrate the potential uses of big-data approaches and consumer reviews to advance sensory nutrition, an emerging field that integrates knowledge from sensory science with nutrition and dietetics to improve health. Moving forward, similar methods may inform approaches to personalized nutrition that can match a person's sensory responses to inform healthier food choices.