Cross-cultural comparisons of Japanese and Australian responses to manipulations of sweetness in foods

Panels of Japanese and Australian consumers evaluated three foods - orange juice, cornflakes, and ice cream - in which the sucrose levels had been manipulated to produce four samples of each food. The panellists' gave ratings of sweetness intensity, sweetness liking, sweetness just right, and overall liking for all samples. In addition, a variety of other sensory attributes were rated. There were few cross-cultural differences in perception of sensory intensity. For hedonic ratings, the patterns of response to increasing sweetness varied according to food and culture. However, there was good cross-cultural agreement regarding the optimal level of sweetness for each food. Multiple regressions revealed a common core of attributes that explained the variance of overall liking, although, for each food, there were differences between the Japanese and Australians in the attributes contributing to the models.