Sensory Characteristics of Tonic Waters with Various Sweetening Substances vs Young Consumers' Opinion

The attitude of young consumers towards food products containing low calorie sweeteners was analyzed as well as consumers’ awareness to the medical recommendations regarding artificial sweeteners. The questionnaire was carried out within the group of 97 respondents at the age of 21 – 30. Strongly negative attitude towards consumption of food products containing low calorie sweeteners was declared by almost half of respondents. Only less than 10% of them has confirmed their strongly positive attitude towards food staff with artificial sweeteners. Slightly more than half of respondents has declared knowledge about the actual medical recommendations for use of artificial sweeteners. Eight selected tonic waters available on polish market where analyzed by Quantitative Descriptive Analysis using Principal Component Analysis together with Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering. The sensory perceptible differences between tonic waters containing only sucrose or mixtures of sucrose with low – calorie artificial sweeteners were detected. Three groups of tested beverages were identified according to sweetening substance used.