Age and sex effects on taste of sucrose, NaCl, citric acid and caffeine.

A procedure combining forced choice discrimination with intensity scaling served to evaluate taste perception of sucrose, NaCl, citric acid and caffeine in 24 young and 24 geriatric subjects. Each group was divided equally by sex. No overall sex differences occurred for taste discrimination, and suprathreshold taste intensity scaling for sucrose and NaCl did not differ by sex or age. However, young adults generally discriminated lower concentrations of citric acid and caffeine from water blanks than did geriatric subjects. Younger subjects judged suprathreshold concentrations of caffeine significantly more intense, as did young females compared to young males; similarly, young females judged citric acid as stronger than did older males. The present suggest that age and gender are major factors in sour and bitter perception.