Developmental changes in the acceptance of the five basic tastes in the first year of life.
Open accessAbstract
Taste is a major determinant of children's food preferences, but its development is incompletely known. Thus, exploring infants' acceptance of basic tastes is necessary. The first objective was to evaluate the acceptance of tastes and their developmental changes over the first year. The second objective was to compare acceptance across tastes. The third objective was to evaluate global taste reactivity (within-subject variability of acceptance across tastes). Acceptance of sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami tastes was assessed in three groups of forty-five 3-, 6- and 12-month-old infants using observations based on ingestion and liking scored by the experimenter. For each taste, four bottles were presented (water, tastant, tastant, water). Acceptance of each taste relative to water was defined using proportional variables based on ingestion or liking. Acceptance over the first year only evolved for sweet taste (marginal decrease) and salty taste (clear increase). At each age, sweet and salty tastes were the most preferred tastes. Reactions to umami were neutral. Sour and bitter tastes were the least accepted ones but rejected only when considering liking data. Ingestion and liking were complementary to assess taste acceptance. However, congruency between these measures rose during the first year. Moreover, with increasing age, reactions were more and more contrasted across tastes. Finally, during the first year, inter-individual variability increased for all tastes except salty taste. By enhancing knowledge of the development of taste acceptance the present study contributes to understand better food behaviour in infancy, the foundation of food behaviour in adulthood.
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Young children prefer more intensely sweet solutions than adults, and a more adult-like preference pattern appears during adolescence.
“The most striking effect was that young children liked more intensely sweet solutions than did adults, with the more adult-like pattern emerging only during adolescence (29, 30).”
From Sweetness and Food Preference (2012) · cites this paper as [30]
The introduction says infants prefer sweeter solutions up to an optimal concentration, and the Discussion reports that sweet-taste preference declined between ages 11–15 and 19–25 in a longitudinal study. The paper does not establish that young children prefer more intensely sweet solutions than adults, or that an adult-like pattern emerges only during adolescence. Page numbers were not available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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“The most striking effect was that young children liked more intensely sweet solutions than did adults, with the more adult-like pattern emerging only during adolescence (29,30).”
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- Authors
- Schwartz, C., Issanchou, S., & Nicklaus, S.
- Affiliations
- Université de Bourgogne (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Issanchou, Sylvie
- Venue
- British Journal of Nutrition
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2009-06-09
- Volume
- 102
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1375-1385
- ISSN
- 0007-1145 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-2662
- OpenAlex
- W2114455617
- Cited by
- 162
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 7.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- British Journal Of Nutrition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-06-PNRA-0028)
- Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale
- Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
- Conseil régional de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
- Symrise
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Biochemical Analysis and Sensing Techniques
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Sensory Analysis and Statistical Methods
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
- Keywords
- taste acceptance, basic taste, sweet taste, salty taste, bitter taste, sour taste, umami taste, food preferences, ingestion, liking, interindividual variability, first year of life
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aging, Anthropometry, Child Development, Female, Food Preferences, Humans, Infant, Infant Nutritional Physiological Phenomena, Male, Taste, Taste Perception
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