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The aim of the present study is to explore the association between food neophobia and chemosensory responsiveness and to determine whether this association translates into different food liking and preference patterns. Data were collected on 1225 respondents (61% females, age 20–60 years) as part of the Italian Taste project. Respondents completed the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) as well as a food preference and familiarity questionnaire for a number of foods and beverages categorized as mild or strong tasting. Moreover, they evaluated attribute intensity and liking of an actual food (dark chocolate pudding) varying in the level of sweetness, bitterness and astringency. Taste function was evaluated by measuring fungiform papillae density (FPD), responsiveness to PROP (6-n-propylthiouracil) and to water solutions representing various oro-sensory qualities. High, medium and low neophobic subjects did not differ for FPD and chemosensory responsiveness. Reported liking was significantly lower for high neophobics than low neophobics mainly for those vegetables and beverages characterized by high levels of warning stimuli (i.e. bitterness, sourness, astringency and alcohol), whereas almost no differences were found for the bland versions of food items. High and medium neophobics rated astringency and, to a lesser extent, bitterness of the dark chocolate pudding, as more intense than low neophobics and liked the most bitter and astringent variants significantly less than low neophobics. Differences in liking, however, do not seem to be mediated by high food neophobics’ superior taste functioning but rather by higher levels of arousal when eating food and/or drinking beverages that are perceived as unpleasant and potentially dangerous. Finally, the effect of food neophobia was evident not only for unusual items in the Italian food context, but even for items that might be considered highly familiar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food choice is influenced by many interacting factors in humans. Its multidimensional and complex nature is well recognized, particularly within the sensory and consumer food science field. However, the vast majority of the studies aimed at understanding determinants of food choices, preferences, and eating behaviours are affected by important limitations: the limited number of factors that are considered at once and the sample size. Furthermore, sensory and hedonic responses to actual food stimuli are often not included in such studies. The Italian Taste project is a large-scale study (three thousand respondents in three years) launched by the Italian Sensory Science Society aimed at addressing these limitations by exploring the associations among a variety of measures – biological, genetic, physiological, psychological and personality-related, socio-cultural – describing the dimensions of food liking, preference, behaviour and choice, and their relevance in determining individual differences within a given food culture framework. In addition, the study includes also the collection of sensory and hedonic responses to actual food stimuli commonly consumed in Italy and prepared to elicit a variation in the strength (from weak to strong) of bitterness, sweetness, saltiness, sourness, pungency, umami and astringency. The aims of the present paper are twofold. Firstly, the paper is aimed to illustrate the variables selected to explore the different dimensions of food choice and to report the experimental procedure adopted for data collection. Secondly, the paper is aimed at showing the potential of the Italian Taste dataset on the basis of the data collected in the first year of the project. For the purpose, we selected a small number of variables known to influence food choices from data collected in the first year of the project on 1225 individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]