Ina Hellmich from Wageningen University is investigating how taste affects the perception of nicotine products and whether this can be compared to taste in food. The appreciation for sweet e-cigarettes appears to be comparable to that for sweet food. In her research, Hellmich did not find a taste that was attractive to smokers, but unappealing to non-smokers. The researcher recently published her results in a scientific journal.
Hellmich exposed test subjects to images of food products and e-cigarettes with a sweet or savory taste. They did this by placing participants in an fMRI scanner and showing them images of vapes or food while they were given sweet or savory scents through a tube in the nose.
They then asked the participants how much they liked the savory e-cigarettes, for example, and how much they would like to consume that product. In analyzing the results, they distinguished between smokers and non-smokers. There appeared to be no differences between smokers and non-smokers in how much they like e-cigarettes. They wanted non-smokers just as much as smokers.
It also turned out that all participants liked the sweet e-cigarettes as much as sweet food. This was also no different for non-smokers than for smokers. At the same time, no one wanted savory e-cigarettes, while both groups did like savory food. It means that knowledge about the taste experience of food cannot be compared one-to-one with that of vaping.
Since the beginning of this year, e-cigarettes with flavors other than tobacco may not be sold.
More information can be found in the publication ‘Context matters: Neural processing of food-flavored e-cigarettes and the influence of smoking‘ in Biological Psychology.
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2024-02-08 11:37:53
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