Taste is an important quality factor in food perception. It may contribute strongly to liking and

choice process. Although the role of food taste is in general accepted, it may not stand to

reason that people understand what they actually taste. Our objective in this study was to

investigate the ability of adults to recognise and identify pure taste modalitilies in water

solutions.

Data were collected in public exposition settings available for various untrained and volunteer

Finnish consumers (n = 127, age 18-81, 76 % females, 24 % males). All the taste samples were

prepared to active-carbon filtered water and stored before serving in sensory laboratory

(University of Turku) following good laboratory practices and high hygienic protocol. Sample for

sweetness was 2 % sucrose, and for saltiness 0.2 % NaCl, for sourness 0.07 % citric acid, for

bitterness 0.07 % caffeine, for umami 0.1 % monosodium glutamate, respectively. All the

participants were asked to spin a sample around the mouth for ten seconds before identifying

the taste modality and writing the response. All the five samples were evaluated one by one by

an individual.

Portion of totally correct answers (all five taste modalities identified) was 38 % in females and

23 % in males. Only 2 % of females and 7 % of males failed a taste test completely. Sweetness

was easiest to identify (96 % and 87 %). Salty taste in a test concentration was able to identify

for 75 % of females and 63 % of males. Sourness (70 % females and 43 % males answered

correctly), bitterness (60 % and 40 %) and umami (51 % and 43 %) were significantly more

challenging than salty and sweet taste. This study shows that even pure taste modalities are not

easy findings for an ordinary man. There is an order for taste education of adults.