This study examined the sweet taste perception, perception of sugar reduction, and utilization of nutrition labeling according to the awareness of the self-perceived sugar intake reduction of university students in Chungbuk Area. The subjects (n=419) were divided into two groups: Awareness of Sugar Intake Reduction (ASIR) group, male=110, female=109; Non Awareness of Sugar Intake Reduction (NASIR) group, male=115, female=85. The overweight/obesity was significantly higher in the ASIR group than in the NASIR group for both male and female students. The sweet taste perception was significantly lower in the ASIR group in male students than in the NASIR group. The purchase level of a product with reduced sugar instead of the original products was significantly higher in the ASIR group in male students than the NASIR group. Beverage purchases after identifying the sugar content were significantly higher in the ASIR group in male students than in the NASIR group. The necessity of nutrition labeling education was significantly higher in the ASIR group both male and female students. Based on these results, the correct perception of sugar reduction and continuous and practical nutrition education of sugar intake reduction need to maintain healthy dietary habits in university students.

Increasing sugar intake of population has become a nutritional issue in Korea. Sweet taste perception may be related to behaviors such as eating sweet food including high sugars and total sugar intake. This study aimed to evaluate objective and subjective sweet taste perception and the association among objective sweet taste perception, dietary behaviors related to eating sweet snack food including high sugar, and total sugar intake from the snacks. Participants were 261 healthy female college students (mean age: 21.0±1.6 years), who were divided into three subgroups based on oral sweet taste evaluation using a sweet taste assessment tool provided by Ministry of Food and Drug Safety: sweet-seeker group (n=139), medium sweet-seeker group (n=54), and unsweet-seeker group (n=68). There was no significant difference in weight and body mass index (BMI) among the three groups; however, the sweet-seeker group had significantly higher sweet taste preference than that of the other groups. Though more people in the sweet-seeker group thought they tended to eat sweet foods than the medium sweet-seeker and unsweet-seeker groups, over half of the sweet-seekers did not think they tended to eat sweet foods. The sweet-seeker group was more likely to eat sweet snacks such as breads, chocolate products, sugar-sweetened milk, and so on than the unsweet-seeker group. Total sugar intake from the selected sweet snacks was 44.4 g for the sweet-seeker group, 34.4 g for the medium sweet-seeker group, and 28.0 g for the unsweet-seeker group with a significant difference. These results indicated the absence of relationship between objective sweet taste perception and the obesity index; however, significant associations were detected among objective sweet taste perception, eating sweet snacks and total sugar intake from the snacks. We also found high disagreement between objective and subjective sweet taste perception of the subjects. The present study provided the novel insight that measuring objective sweet taste perception may be useful for assessing the risk of high sugar consumption and undesirable dietary behaviors.

This study was implemented to understand the motivation factors for 2nd grade schoolchildren that effect on their preference for the sweet taste. The subjects included were 118 children (59 boys and 59 girls) and 118 children's guardians, from one elementary school. Children participated in sweet preference test and questionnaire survey with researcher's guidance provided in the school. Children's guardians were asked to fill out the questionnaire via home-letters. The results were as follows: 59% of the children preferred the cocoa beverage with the highest concentration of sugar among five cocoa beverages (0%, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, and 10% of sucrose/milk volume). The variables consisted of affective attitude, cognitive attitude, self-efficacy, parenting style, and sweets frequency. According to the analysis, sweet preferences were correlated with children's affective attitude (r=－0.207, p<0.01), self-efficacy (r=－0.288, p<0.01), frequency of drinking carbonated beverage (r=0.272, p<0.01), preference for yogurt (r=0.184, p<0.05), and preference for sweet bread (r=0.226, p<0.05). These results indicated that children can be more affected by affective attitude than cognitive attitude, and self-efficacy can be an important motivation factor to control the eating behavior related to sweets. Therefore, nutrition educators need to focus on developing various methods related to increasing self-efficacy for encouraging and motivating healthy eating behavior in children.