Snack foods, particularly empty calorie snacks, are increasingly used in place of more nutritious foods, especially by teenagers. In order to alleviate possible nutritional deficiencies that may result from excessive snacking, many researchers are trying to develop acceptable, nutritious snack foods. One of these products is sweet potato sticks, a nutritious snack food developed at the Department of Food Science at North Carolina State University. The purpose of this study was to determine if sweet potato sticks were an acceptable snack to teenagers. A sample of 250 high school students randomly selected from three schools in different regions of piedmont North Carolina were used for the study. Each student evaluated two flavors of the sweet potato sticks, salted and cinnamon flavored, by completing a closed form questionnaire developed by the researcher. Snacking habits of these teenagers were also surveyed by means of the questionnaire. After the taste-testing was completed in the three high schools, there were enough of both flavors of potato sticks remaining to test with one other class. A third grade, with twenty-eight students, was chosen in order to see the response of another age group to the sweet potato sticks. Both flavors of the sweet potato sticks were rated acceptable by the majority of the students. The salted flavor was rated higher in both age groups. Many of the adolescent females gave lower ratings than did the males
