Design aspects of vaginal applicators that influence acceptance among target users.

Although sensory-guided product design is most traditionally used by food and beverage companies, the approach has widespread application for many other products, including pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Previously, our team used sensory methods to explore preclinical optimization of soft-gel vaginal microbicides. Past clinical trials suggest vaginal microbicides may be an effective means for women to protect themselves from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, but these microbicides will not work if they are not used due to poor acceptability.

Discrimination of Isointense Bitter Stimuli in a Beer Model System.

Prior work suggests humans can differentiate between bitter stimuli in water. Here, we describe three experiments that test whether beer consumers can discriminate between different bitterants in beer. In Experiment 1 (n = 51), stimuli were intensity matched; Experiments 2 and 3 were a difference from control (DFC)/check-all-that-apply (CATA) test (n = 62), and an affective test (n = 81).

Blending dark green vegetables with fruits in commercially available infant foods makes them taste like fruit.

Vegetables are an important but under consumed part of a healthy diet. There is growing interest in promoting vegetable acceptance and consumption among infants to help establish life-long healthy eating patterns. A recent survey of commercial baby food products in the United States by Moding and colleagues revealed a lack of variety in the types of vegetables offered.

Regional Variation of Bitter Taste and Aftertaste in Humans.

Despite widespread and persistent myths of a tongue map, all 5 prototypical taste qualities are sensed over the entire tongue. However, modern psychophysical data also suggest there may be more nuanced differences in suprathreshold intensity across oral loci, especially for bitterness. Here, we test whether bitter stimuli matched for whole-mouth intensity differ in perceived intensity across regions of the oral cavity in 2 experiments.