Methods: 17 subjects without missing teeth (2 females and 15 males, mean age: 31.0 years) were selected for this study after obtaining informed consent. Newly designed four types of sample food made from 3% agarose were prepared, which contained sucrose (sweet), sodium chloride (salty), tartaric acid (sour), and quinine hydrochloride (bitter), respectively. Two concentrations representing weak and strong taste were prepared for each tastant. The subjects were instructed to chew the sample foods, and the numbers of chewing strokes were counted for recognizing the taste.
Results: In case of the sweet tastant, the average numbers of chewing strokes were 9.5 and 4.4 for the low and high concentration, respectively. Same tendency was shown for other three tastants: the numbers of chewing strokes decreased corresponding to the higher concentration of the sample and significant difference was observed between two concentrations (Two-factor ANOVA;p<0.05).
Conclusion: The findings suggested that newly designed sample foods containing four tastants with fixed concentration were appropriate for recognizing the spread of the taste and that by using these four tastants, counting the number of chewing strokes for recognizing the taste would be useful as a new gustatory test to investigate the taste sensation.