Changes in Desires and Liking during spicy meals

H.C. Reinbach (1) ( hcrelife.ku.dk) , P. Møller (1) ( pemlife.ku.dk)
(1) The Faculty of Life Sciences (LIFE), Department of Food Science, Denmark

Hot spices contribute with a range of flavors, provide nutritional value and the hot or tingling sensations, enhance the pleasure of eating. Capsaicin, the pungent substance in hot chilli peppers, has been suggested as a weight loss agent due to its promising effects on metabolic rate and appetite.

In this study the effect of adding chilli pepper, horseradish, ginger, mustard and wasabi to five different meals on the desires to eat (the intrinsic motivation to engage in eating a food, now or in the near future) (Mela, D.J. 2000) and liking (immediate pleasure from eating) was investigated in a meal study with 40 young males and females.

All participants received five meals of fixed size ( hot spices) followed by a buffet with free choice of all the food components from the fixed meals. The desire for sour, sweet, fat, bitter, salty and hot stimuli as well as liking was scored on a 9-point category scale. A statistical analysis using Proc Mixed in SAS revealed that desires for sour, fatty, salty and hot were reduced during progression of the meals.

When comparing the spicy fixed meal with the non-spicy version of the meal, chilli increased the desire for sweet (p= 0.0405) whereas adding mustard to the meal decreased the desire of salty (p= 0.0026) stimuli. Furthermore the hot meals, except that spiced with ginger, reduced the desire for hot when compared to the non-spicy meals. Men had more desire for fatty and salty stimuli than women, whereas non-eaters of chilli had higher desire for bitter stimuli than eaters of chilli. Further studies to investigate how induced food desires are reflected in food choice and eating behavior should be performed.
 

Mela, D. J. (2000). Why do we like what we like? Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 81, 10–16.