Influence of alcohol consumption on the taste perception of sweet and salty tastes in college students

Abstract

Objective: to evaluate the influence of alcohol consumption on the taste perception of sweet and salty tastes in university students. Method: it is an epidemiological, transversal and analytical study, carried out with 330 university students. For data collection, a questionnaire about personal, academic and sociodemographic information, the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification, was used to measure anthropometric data and a taste threshold test was applied. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test was performed, the Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the mean thresholds between the groups and stratified correlation analysis to assess the effect of alcohol use on the taste threshold. The significance level of 0.05 was adopted for statistical analysis. Results: the mean of the taste threshold for sweet tastes 2.98 (SD ± 2.20) and salty 0.22 (SD ± 0.23) were found. When comparing the groups under study, it was evidenced that alcohol consumption was negatively correlated (r = -0.205; p = 0.004) to the salty threshold among individuals in health courses. There was no statistically significant correlation between alcohol consumption, physical activity and cardiovascular risk according to waist circumference in the evaluated groups. Conclusion: there was a correlation between alcohol consumption and gustatory perception; the higher the alcohol consumption the lower the gustatory sensitivity to salty taste.