New thesis: Taste sensitivity in pre-adolescent children

23.11.2021    PhD defence

Ervina (ESR2) defended recently her thesis entitled “Taste sensitivity and food liking in pre-adolescent children”. In this research she has investigated variability in taste sensitivity in pre-adolescent children and tried to link this to food liking. She as applied different tools for measuring taste sensitivity (taste responsiveness, detection and identification threshold as well as response to PROP).  Children’s sensitivity has been explored with both water solutions and model foods. The results show that taste sensitivity is not a major factor for food liking, however, there are individual differences in taste responsiveness which can be linked to differences in liking patterns of the model foods. Children’s ability to identify basic tastes in unfamiliar foods was also investigated, and the results show that they are able to identify basic tastes (umami not included in the study) in foods, but struggle more with complex foods where there are several tastes involved.

Committee:

First opponent: Associate Professor Annemarie Olsen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Second opponent: Professor Gaëlle Arvisenet, AgroSup Dijon – National Superior Institute of Agronomic Sciences, Food and the Environment, France
Committee coordinator: Associate professor Davide Porcellato, NMBU

Supervisors:

Main supervisor: Associate Professor Valerie Lengard Almli, NMBU
Co-supervisor: Scientist Ingunn Berget, Nofima, The Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research
Co-supervisor: Associate Professor Caterina Dinella, University of Florence, Italy
Co-supervisor: Professor Siv Borghild Skeie, NMBU

Papers

Ervina, E., I. Berget, A. Nilsen, and V.L. Almli (2020), The ability of 10–11-year-old children to identify basic tastes and their liking towards unfamiliar foods. Food Quality and Preference, 83: p. 103929. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2020.103929

Ervina, E., I. Berget, and V. L. Almli (2020), Investigating the Relationships between Basic Tastes Sensitivities, Fattiness Sensitivity, and Food Liking in 11-Year-Old Children. Foods, 9(9): p. 1315. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9091315

Ervina Ervina, Ingunn Berget, & Valérie L. Almli. (2020). Investigating the Relationships between Basic Tastes Sensitivities, Fattiness Sensitivity, and Food Liking in 11-Year-Old Children. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9091315

Ervina, E., Berget, I., Skeie, S., & L. Almli, V. (2021). Basic taste sensitivity, eating behaviour, and propensity of dairy foods of preadolescent children: How are they related? Open Research Europe, 1(127). doi:10.12688/openreseurope.14117.1

 

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