According to our hypothesis i, sugar-reduced biscuits were perceived
as less sweet than standard biscuits at low reduction levels,
whereas fat-reduced biscuits were perceived as less fatty than
standard biscuits at higher reduction levels. These results are similar
to those previously observed in the study of Drewnowski et al.
(1998) on six types of laboratory biscuits with reduced sugar and/
or fat content.
This could be explained by the fact that fat perception is known
to be more complex to perceive and to characterise than sweetness
(Drewnowski & Almiron-Roig, 2010; Mela, 1990; Mela & Marshall,
1991). Moreover, it may be due to the semantic term that we
selected to assess fat perception. During the study, we asked subjects
how fatty were the biscuits, but other descriptors could have
induced other results. Drewnowski et al. (1989) described the
difficulty in choosing suitable attribute scales for the assessment
of fat content in different foods, summarising the descriptors that
exist to describe the lipid mouthfeel: smooth, oily, greasy, waxy,
melting, slimy, creamy, thick, heavy and syrupy. In their study on
six types of fat- and/or sugar-reduced biscuits, Drewnowski et al.
(1998) used the term buttery. However, in the present study, we
thought this term would be biased toward A and C Biscuits so
we chose the term fatty, which is better adapted to all the biscuits.
Nevertheless, there is one exception: one biscuit was perceived
as less fatty than the standard biscuit from the first level of fat
reduction. This could be related to the fact that the standard variant
of this biscuit initially contained more fat than the other biscuits.
This finding indicates that the total quantity of fat content
removed is higher. Moreover, contrary to the other biscuits, this
is a buttery biscuit; thus, the fat content is perhaps easier to
perceive due to the buttery flavour. This also can be due to the fact