Measures of taste discriminability for sweet, salty and umami stimuli: Japanese versus Americans

Abstract

Japanese and American subjects performed triangle tests with various concentrations of sucrose. NaCl and MSG. Both sets of subjects were tested in their own countries in their own languages. The Japanese discriminated significantly better for sucrose and MSG, while for NaCl there were no significant differences between the groups. To protect against variation in water purity between the American and Japanese laboratories. 10 mM NaCl was used as the solvent, while judges were pre-adapted to the solvent to render it tasteless. Changing from purified water to 10 mM NaCl as the solvent, alters the discriminability of the stimuli.