Investigating on taste and odor in subjects with different BMI

Obesity has become the leading metabolic disease in the world. Taste and odors are the main drivers of food palatability and can be affected by alteration in sensory perception. The cause effect relationship between sensory perception and obesity is still far from clear. The investigations had been done through sensorial science, neuroscience, chemistry and biochemistry (1) but nevertheless, the correlation between obesity and sensory responsiveness remain blunt. As first, the investigation towards the food liking between 30 obese (O) and 30 normal weight (N) male Italian people focusing on salt-, sweet-, and fat- taste preference were measured using PrefQuest Questionnaire. As further, gustatory and olfactory responsiveness were evaluated (10 obese and 10 normal, both sexes) by sensory threshold and GC/O, respectively. There was no significant difference (p> 0,05) found towards liking preference of salt-, sweet-, and fat-, but it shows the trends where O subjects prefer salt- and fatty-salty dishes while N shows tendency to prefer sweet- and fatty-sweet dishes. Quantity-based liking preference also shows the same trends. Gustatory results show significantly differences (p< 0,05) for all tastes in recognition threshold. Olfactory evaluations show greater differences (p< 0,01) for all tested odorants and the olfactogram suggests that O subject have difficulties to perceive and detect odorants. From these results the O subjects demonstrated to have lower sensitiveness towards taste and odors and they have different responsiveness of gustatory and olfactory by nose than N subjects. Additional investigations are necessary but these results contributes to understanding weather an impaired sensory perception can be a co-factor in the development and or maintenance of obesity.