Are There Generational Differences in Taste Preferences?

Overview

Objectives/Goals I wanted to know if taste preferences of children change when they become adults. My next question was if children of parents who ate, and now serve certain foods to their children would like them better than those who do not. Methods/Materials I randomly selected 14 parents and 1 child of each parent, ages of 5 to 10, all from my school. Granny Smith Apples and Brussels sprouts were juiced into drink form and given to the parent, while the child was not in the room. Subjects were blindfolded with their nose plugged. I recorded their description of the taste (sweet, sour, bitter, or salty), and their ranking from Terrible to Very Good (scale of 1-5). I also asked all of the testers if they eat the foods regularly. Results For the Granny Smith Apples, all of the subjects told me that they tasted either sweet or sour and the average rating was 3.61 which was scored Good. The majority all subjects ranked the food Sour which is what I expected. The Good rating for the adults was slightly higher than the children except in the group that did not serve the food regularly. For the Brussels sprouts, 86% of all subjects thought they were Bitter. The average rating for all subjects was a 2.02 or O.K. but very close to Not Good. The children testers liked the food slightly better than the adults whether they eat them regularly or not. Conclusions/Discussion My hypothesis was that food preferences change as we become adults and that people regularly eat certain foods would like them more than those who do not. However I realized that all of the testers ranked these two foods almost the same whether the parents regularly served them to their families or not. I cannot conclude that the different age groups responded differently in ranking taste preferences for these foods. Maybe it is because that people#s taste preferences do not change for these two foods. Possibly my results would be different if I tested more subjects or had more culture differences in the people I tested. All tested live in Humboldt County with families who attend my school.

Competition history

• CSEF 2008 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0609

Resources

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