The Scented Sip: Enhancing Beverage Sweetness Perception through Olfactory Modulation

Sugar can play various roles in food production such as bulking or coloring agent, which can improve the pleasure of eating and enhance the appetite of the consumers. The increasing use of sugar in food industry results in consumers' gradually weakened perception of sugar, as well as their unknowing over-consumption of sugar, which has negative impact on their health. While eating, people's taste perception can be affected by the odor of food to a certain extent. This study explored the possibility of odor sweetening, and the effect of odor intensity on sweetness perception and eating pleasure. Through user experiment, this study investigated reasonable combination of sweet odor concentration interval-food sweetness interval, aiming to enhance sweetness perception by controlling the odor of food, and to reduce people's sugar intake while ensuring the flavor of food and people's eating pleasure, thus providing a new strategy for sugar reduction.