For most people, biting into a lemon would leave them puckered up and desperate to lose that sour flavor, but a new study by Penn State researchers revealed that roughly one in eight adults like intensely sour sensations.
Apr 29 2024Penn State The cross-cultural study, recently published in the journal Food Quality and Preference, demonstrated there is a subset of "sour likers" who enjoy exceptionally sour foods.
Previous studies have shown that some children, roughly one in three, enjoy intensely sour things, Hayes explained, but this had not been tested directly in adults. His recent study, conducted in partnership with researchers in Italy, was the first to show that for a sizeable amount of people, the enjoyment of sourness lasts well into adulthood.
The team measured the responses of 143 American adults to various levels of citric acid in water. They also measured the responses of 350 Italian adults to pear juice spiked with various amounts of citric acid. They selected participants with similar age, gender and ethnicity -; majority white -; from a metropolitan area in Tuscany, Italy, and from the municipality of State College.
Related StoriesBy gauging levels of liking, the researchers were also able to test the hypothesis that "sour likers" might just be less sensitive to sour foods, the theory that higher concentrations of sourness for "sour likers" registered the same as lower concentrations of sourness in someone else.
"Italian food culture and American food culture are so wildly different," said Sara Spinelli, a researcher from the University of Florence in Italy and first author on the paper. "And yet we end up with almost identical percentages, which suggests to us this is not an effect of prior exposure. It's probably something innately different about those people. We don't know what that is, but it tells us that it's not just the foods you grew up with.
Hayes explained that this type of segmentation could be used to develop tailored products that account for the specific "sour liker" taste profile.
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