Amazon reviews analysis reveals modern food is too sweet

An analysis of reviews left by more than a quarter million Amazon customers has shed light on one consistent consumer complaint about modern food products: they’re too sweet. The conclusion comes from a study that analyzed around 400,000 food product reviews published on Amazon over the course of a decade.

The findings were published by the Monell Chemical Senses Center, where researchers used a ‘sophisticated statistical modeling program’ to find words related to a variety of aspects pertaining to food products, including smell, taste, and texture. One aspect of the reviews eclipsed the others, according to the study: complaints about excessive sweetness.

The research looked at 383,568 food reviews published about 67,553 different products. Thanks to machine learning, researchers were able to go through such a vast archive and make determinations about the food, including that the majority complaint revolved around how much sugar — or other sweeteners — were used in these items.

The ‘too sweet’ complaint impacted nearly 1-percent of all food product reviews, with mentions of excessive sweetness being 25 times more common than complaints about too little sweetness. How sweet a product tasted was found in 11-percent of reviews, and was nearly three times more likely to be mentioned compared to bitterness.

Surprisingly, the researchers found that reviewers rarely mentioned saltiness in their reviews despite the number of salty snacks on the market. Not everyone agrees about how a product tastes, however, with the study identifying a number of products that had polarizing reviews. In addition to changes to a products formula, individual perceptions about taste played a role in these variations.

Source: Slashgear.com

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