Background: sip feeds are oral nutritional supplements (ONSs) that are commonly prescribed to malnourished patients to
improve their nutritional and clinical status. However, ONSs are poorly consumed and frequently wasted, with sweetness
being identified as one of the factors leading to patients’ dislike of ONSs.
Objectives: to investigate if age affects sweetness thresholds and if this impacts upon perceived sweetness intensity,
hedonic (sweetness and overall) and ranked preference of ONS products.
Design: prospective, observational.
Subjects: thirty-six young adults (18–33 years) and 48 healthy older adults (63–85 years).
Setting: Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences and the Clinical Health Sciences at the University of Reading.
Methods: detection and recognition threshold levels, basic taste identification and ‘just about right’ level of sweetness were
examined. Three ONSs (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry) and sucrose solutions were evaluated for hedonic sweetness, overall
hedonic liking, sweetness intensity and rank preference.
Results: significant differences were found in both sweetness detection and recognition thresholds (P = 0.0001) between
young and older adults, with older adults more likely to incorrectly identify the taste (P = 0.0001). Despite the deterioration
in sweetness sensitivity among the older adults, there were no significant differences found in sweetness intensity perceived
for the ONS products presented (P > 0.05) when compared with the young adults. However, across both groups sweetness
intensity was found to be correlated with overall product dislike across all flavour variants tested (R = 0.398, P = 0.0001).
Conclusions: sweetness appears to be one of many factors contributing to the dislike of ONSs. Manufacturers are encouraged
to reconsider the formulations of these products so that beneficial effects of ONSs can be delivered in a more palatable
and acceptable form and wastage reduced
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