Psychophysical relationship between sweetness and redness in strawberry-flavored drinks

Extract: A consumer-like taste panel of 10 men and women (ages 22-50) evaluated the sweetness, pleasantness and color acceptability of 5 sweetened, strawberry-red colored beverages (containing 3.2-4.8% sucrose) using magnitude estimation. Five intensities of strawberry colors were formulated using increasing volumes of FDandC Red 40 and a constant volume of both FDandC Yellow 6 and imitation strawberry flavoring. Color measurements from a colorimeter and a spectrophotometer were converted to the value arctan. Sensory responses were evaluated against the value arctan, representing color intensity, and sucrose concentration, as percentage of sugar. Sweetness perception increased with increasing sucrose concentration, with a slope greater than 2.00, but produced an exponent less than 1.0 when evaluated against arctan. Sweetness increased approximately 2 to 12% with increasing color intensity in 4% sucrose solutions. Perceived sweetness was influenced by pleasantness effects and color acceptability. Color 3 samples were rated as the sweetest, most pleasant-tasting drinks, and had the most acceptable color. The color-sweetness function was linear over a narrow color range. (author/wz)