Aversive textures and their role in food rejection

Texture is a prominent feature in foods and consequently can be the reason a food is accepted or rejected. However, other sensory attributes, such as flavor/taste, aroma, sound, and appearance may also lead to the rejection of food and motivations other than unpleasantness exist in unacceptance. To date, these motivations for food rejection have been studied in isolation and their relationships with psychological factors have not been tested. This study measured reasons people reject a food and probed into the specifics of texture rejection. A large U.S. sample (N = 473) was asked to rate their motivations for rejecting a food, list foods that were disliked due to unpleasant sensory attributes, specify the unpleasant sensory attribute(s), and complete an assessment of general touch sensitivity. Results showed 94% of individuals reject a food due to its texture, a rate comparable to flavor-based rejection. Looking at the number of foods being rejected, flavor was the most common food attribute, followed by texture and then aroma. From a linguistic standpoint, aversive textures encompass a large vocabulary, larger than liked textures, and the same food may be rejected due to a single or combination of texture terms. Viscosity (e.g., slimy) and hardness (e.g., mushy) are the most common aversive texture types, but through cluster analysis subsets of individuals were identified that are more aversive to other textures. This study emphasizes the role of aversive textures in food rejection and provides many avenues for future investigations.