K. Duerrschmid1, Ulrike Stadlbauer1, Katharina Hanz1, Birgit Lahm1, Eva Unterberger2
1 University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, BOKU Vienna, Department of Food Science and Technology, Division of Food Quality Assurance
2 essenziell - Ernährungskommunikation GmbH
It is a clichéd assertion that today’s children have worse tasting and smelling skills than children of former times. Fast food, soft drinks and bad eating habits in general are blamed for that. To test these two hypotheses 385 Austrian school pupils in the age of 10 to 12 years were examined for their gustatory and olfactory skills using a basic taste test and a sniffin’ sticks smell identification test. The pupils’ eating behaviour and food preferences were registered before the sensory tests using a questionnaire. The tests were performed in 18 schools in 8 provinces of Austria according to the relative number of local population. According to the proportion of schoolchildren in the two main school forms junior high school “Hauptschule” and grammar school “Gymnasium”, 290 pupils were tested in junior high schools and 95 pupils in grammar schools. As there are no historical data on the taste and smell skills available, the pupils’ data were compared with the corresponding results of adults. Furthermore the results of groups of pupils that pronouncedly differed with regard to their eating behaviour and food preferences were considered.
The results demonstrate that adults are better in performing the applied tests than the investigated pupils. Several correlations between eating behaviour and sensory test results could be found, which do not disprove the hypothesis of bad eating habits as a cause for bad sensory perception skills. In general, pupils of junior high schools performed worse than pupils of grammar schools in taste und smell tests. This result does not necessarily mean that junior high school pupils perceive worse than grammar school pupils. It could also be concluded, that these test results are influenced by the pupils’ general intelligence and abilities to manage a test situation.
Acknowledgement: This study was financed by AMA Agrarmarkt Austria GesmbH.
