Shifts in food intake can greatly affect health on a population level. However, shifts in food patterns may also result in shifts in the overall taste of the diet. A diet consists of multiple foods with different taste intensities. For example, if you follow a vegan diet, your dietary pattern may consist of less savory-tasting foods, such as meat and cheese, and more neutral-tasting foods, such as pulses. Eating according to the national guidelines will also increase your intake of neutral-tasting foods, such as vegetables, and lower your intake of sweet and salty foods.

To be able to say something about the effects of shifts in diets and their effect on the taste of diets, both food intake and food taste intensity values can be combined to get a good insight into dietary taste patterns. As taste is an important driver of intake, having insight into the effects of certain diets on taste, may also give us a better understanding of why it is difficult to adhere to certain guidelines.

taste databases

Teo et al. (2018) have, for example, assessed taste intensity values of the most commonly consumed Dutch and Malaysian foods and compiled these in a so-called taste database.^[1] This database is comparable to food composition databases, with the difference that it contains taste values instead of nutrients. Based on the taste values groups of foods similar in taste can be formed. Here you can find the Dutch SVT database and its background information.

The typical Dutch dietary taste pattern

Although the foods available across the globe are comparable in taste intensities, there are great differences in dietary taste patterns across the globe. For example, in Malaysia, 50% of commonly consumed foods have a savory taste (that is food items from the salt/umami/fat taste cluster), whereas in the Netherlands this is only 25%.