6533b831fe1ef96bd1299515

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Consumer testing in elderly population: impact of age and dependence on liking scoring

subject

description

In this beginning of XXI° century, there is a total of 600 millions of elderly in the world, and this population should reach 2 milliards in 2050. In such a context, growing interest is devoted to this population, both from an economical and a societal point of view. A key challenge is to promote healthy ageing, a nutritious diet being considered as an important factor to assist elderly in maintaining optimal level of health and preventing the onset of disease or dependency. As ageing is accompanied by physiological and psychological changes, that may alter food perception and preferences. Developing nutritious food likely to meet preferences of older people requests consumer testing with this population. However, frailty and apparition of cognitive alteration question the relevance of tools used in consumer science, in particular with very older or dependent people. Consequently, the present study aims at developing a hedonic scale suitable for frail elderly and at assessing elderly ability to carry out discriminative and repeatable hedonic judgements. After a qualitative study which led to the selection of a scale combining labels and pictograms, a quantitative survey was conducted with young participants (n=64; 18-49 years), elderly participants living at home (n=55; 65-80 years) and elderly participants living in a nursing home (n=22; 74-93 years). During two sessions, participants rated their liking for 7 dairy products following a monadic sequential design allowing testing for intra and inter-session repeatability. Results showed a decrease of the discrimination level with age and dependency, but significant differences between the products were still observed for elderly group. Furthermore, repeatability was preserved even for dependent elderly. To conclude, this study offers interesting perspectives for using sensory methodology in order to explore the preferences of older and/or dependent people and to make eating still enjoyable in this population.