Asseo Kim, Niv Masha Y
The Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition, The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Foods. 2022 Jun 24;11(13):1872. doi: 10.3390/foods11131872.
Sweet taste is innately appealing, ensuring that mammals are attracted to the sweetness of mother's milk and other sources of carbohydrates and calories. In the modern world, the availability of sugars and sweeteners and the eagerness of the food industry to maximize palatability, result in an abundance of sweet food products, which poses a major health challenge. The aim of the current study is to analyze sweetness levels, liking, and ingredients of online reviews of food products, in order to obtain insights into sensory nutrition and to identify new opportunities for reconciling the palatability-healthiness tension. We collected over 200,000 reviews of ~30,000 products on Amazon dated from 2002 to 2012 and ~350,000 reviews of ~2400 products on iHerb from 2006 to 2021. The reviews were classified and analyzed using manual curation, natural language processing, and machine learning. In total, ~32,000 (Amazon) and ~29,000 (iHerb) of these reviews mention sweetness, with 2200 and 4600 reviews referring to the purchased products as oversweet. Oversweet reviews were dispersed among consumers. Products that included sucralose had more oversweet reviews than average. 26 products had at least 50 reviews for which at least 10% were oversweet. For these products, the average liking by consumers reporting oversweetness was significantly lower (by 0.9 stars on average on a 1 to 5 stars scale) than by the rest of the consumers. In summary, oversweetness appears in 7-16% of the sweetness-related reviews and is less liked, which suggests an opportunity for customized products with reduced sweetness. These products will be simultaneously healthier and tastier for a substantial subgroup of customers and will benefit the manufacturer by expanding the products' target audience. Analysis of consumers' reviews of marketed food products offers new ways to obtain informative sensory data.
甜味天生具有吸引力，能确保哺乳动物被母乳的甜味以及其他碳水化合物和热量来源所吸引。在现代社会，糖和甜味剂随处可得，食品行业又急于将口感提升至极致，这导致了大量甜味食品的出现，这对健康构成了重大挑战。本研究的目的是分析食品在线评论中的甜度水平、喜好程度和成分，以便深入了解感官营养，并找出调和口感与健康之间矛盾的新机会。我们收集了亚马逊上2002年至2012年约30000种产品的20多万条评论，以及iHerb上2006年至2021年约2400种产品的约35万条评论。这些评论通过人工筛选、自然语言处理和机器学习进行分类和分析。其中，亚马逊约32000条（iHerb约29000条）评论提到了甜味，有2200条和4600条评论称购买的产品过甜。过甜的评论分散在消费者中。含有三氯蔗糖的产品过甜评论比平均水平更多。有26种产品至少有50条评论，其中至少10%认为过甜。对于这些产品，报告过甜的消费者的平均喜好程度（在1至5星的评分中平均低0.9星）明显低于其他消费者。总之，过甜出现在7%至16%与甜味相关的评论中，且不太受喜欢，这表明有机会推出甜度降低的定制产品。这些产品对相当一部分消费者来说将同时更健康、更美味，并且通过扩大产品的目标受众使制造商受益。对市售食品的消费者评论进行分析提供了获取信息丰富的感官数据的新方法。
