1Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, AgroSup Dijon, CNRS, INRAE, Université Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, F-2

Impact of Very Hot Drink Consumption Habits, Age, and Sex, on Taste Sensitivity

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2024-05-05 14:00:18

1Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, AgroSup Dijon, CNRS, INRAE, Université Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, F-21000 Dijon, France; rf.earni@duaryen.cire

The temperature range for consuming hot drinks includes temperatures that can damage cells on the tongue. We hypothesized that the consumption of very hot drinks can lead to a decrease in the ability to perceive low concentrations of tastants. We evaluated the ability to perceive low concentrations of five prototypical sapid compounds in 42 women and 40 men aged 18–65. A questionnaire made it possible to collect the usual frequencies (number of unit/day) and consumption temperature levels (medium hot/very hot) for four very common hot drinks (coffee, tea, herbal infusions, and hot chocolate). Our results showed that subjects who consumed very hot drinks (versus medium hot) were less sensitive to sweet (p = 0.020) and salty (p = 0.046) tastes. An aggravating effect of high consumption frequencies was only shown for sweet taste (p = 0.036). Moreover, our data also showed that women were more sensitive than men to sour, bitter, and umami tastes (p values < 0.05), as well as that taste sensitivity decreases with age, especially after 50 years old (all tastes; p values < 0.05). These findings strengthen our knowledge about the influence of sex and age on taste sensitivity, and they provide knowledge on the influence of consumption habits related to hot drinks on taste sensitivity.

Coffee and tea are the two most frequently consumed hot drinks in the world [1]. Other widely consumed hot drinks include herbal infusions, hot chocolate, and mate. These drinks are obtained by solid–liquid extraction (coffee, tea, mate, etc.) or by dissolution using a solvent (example: hot chocolate and instant coffee). In any case, their preparation involves the use of a solvent that is heated to a very high temperature, most often water. For example, brewing coffee requires water with a temperature ideally between 85 and 95 °C [2]. At the end of the preparation, the temperature of the drink is lower than that of the given solvent. However, the temperature remains very high. In the catering industry, the recommended temperature for keeping drinks warm is between 85 and 88 °C [2]. According to Brown and Diller [3], hot beverages such as tea, hot chocolate, and coffee are frequently served at temperatures between 71.1 and 85 °C. These results were corroborated by data from a lawsuit against a fast food restaurant chain in the United States that showed that coffee that caused burns was dispensed at a temperature between 75 and 88 °C [4]. Furthermore, Verst et al. [4] showed that the average serving temperature of coffee approximately two minutes after preparation varied between 66 and 77 °C depending on the given machine and the context (household or food service industry). Hot drinks are not always consumed directly after preparation. The time between the preparation and the introduction of hot drinks into the mouth allows for cooling. This drop in temperature depends on several factors such as the initial temperature of the drink, the time between preparation and its introduction into the mouth, the thermal properties of the container, the ambient temperature, and the amount of other added substances such as milk and cream. [3]. When consumers deem the temperature satisfactory, the hot drinks are taken into the mouth and consumed. In practice, this consumption is sometimes preceded by a test phase intended to estimate the risk of burns. Several studies have made it possible to determine the temperature that is considered to be ideal by consumers. For coffee, which has been frequently studied, the ideal temperature seems to be between 60 and 70 °C [2,4,5,6]. For tea or mate, the preferred temperature seems to be close to 70 °C [6]. However, the temperature that is considered ideal varies across consumers. In fact, in a cohort study involving more than 40,000 regular tea drinkers, Islami et al. [7] showed that 39.0% of participants drank their tea at a temperature below 60 °C, 38.9% drank it between 60 and 64 °C, and 22.0% drank it at more than 65 °C.