Academic Consortium Publications for August 2023

Globally, rates of overweight and obesity are on the rise. One of the contributing factors may be the overconsumption of sugary beverages. Sweet is an innately pleasurable sensation, so it is no wonder that consumers might be prone to drinking too much sugary liquid. But consumers are diverse. Peng et al. (2023) created a model beverage for investigating individual rejection thresholds of sweetness. The big takeaways might be related to methodology. Individual rejection thresholds determined by serving drinks in order of descending sucrose concentrations were good predictors of sugar intake both in the overall diet and in sweetened beverages. But individual rejection thresholds determined by serving drinks in order of ascending sucrose concentrations did not have these strong predictive relationships. The authors speculate on why this should be. They also note that high-sweetness acceptance does not indicate low-sweetness rejection. All of this underscores the importance of designing a study that measures the most relevant constructs in the best way. Read more about this paper and other publications from the Compusense Academic Consortium here.