How good is our sense of taste? Do we even know what we actually like?

I recently conducted an in-person mini-experiment on whether we can tell different beverages apart – and how much we like them (with co-organizer Hannah Vazquez). Different stations were set up, each containing small (<1oz) tasting cups of a single type of beverage (with 5-6 distinct beverages of that type, labeled A, B, C, etc. so that nobody could tell which was which). The stations were:

• 5 types of water

• 5 types of cold coffee

• 5 types of pinot noir red wines (of varying prices)

• 5 types of pinot grigio white wines (of varying prices)

• 6 colas (including both diet and regular)

• 6 mystery liquids (all of these were actually fruit juices that had been dyed different non-standard colors – participants were informed that the liquids had been dyed)

At each station, people had to guess which item was which (from a list of all the options, except for the mystery liquids station where they had no information about what the options might be).

We also had people rate how much they enjoyed each beverage (on a seven-point scale from -3= “strongly dislike” to +3= “strongly like”), which led to some interesting findings.

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— Main takeaways —

The main result of this experiment is that people are terrible at telling what they are drinking. Our taste perception is, I think, much worse than we generally believe it to be (and often, we rely on non-taste context cues to distinguish things without realizing it). The single best person in our group (at predicting which drink was which) was 50% accurate, with the mean accuracy in the group (taken across people, not predictions) being 29% and median accuracy being 24%.

Note: I DO think that people can learn to very accurately distinguish flavors with lots of repeated practice where they get feedback. But that’s a different question than whether random (untrained) people can, for example, tell colas apart in a blind taste test.

Some other tentative takeaways from the study are:

• You can probably find a cheap wine that you like as much or more than most expensive wines (in fact, you might even like relatively cheap wine better on average than expensive wine)

• You may well like bottled water better than New York tap water (many of our participants did). But if you decide to drink bottled waters, you may well be able to find cheap bottled waters that you like as much or more than expensive bottled waters.

• Random people don’t necessarily like pinot noir red wines (the average rating of how much people liked them in our group was slightly worse than neutral and substantially worse than they rated the waters)

You can see the data table of results here if you like: http://bit.ly/2NxZOcV

And here’s the mini data collection app I made for the event if you’re curious http://bit.ly/tastytasting

Take these results with a grain of salt, though, because: (a) this was a very small study on a pretty homogenous population, (b) the conclusions are based on the averages (you may well be far from average on relevant dimensions), and (c) drinking room temperature liquid from a small plastic-tasting cup is not the most accurate simulation of our experience of beverages in real life.

Below are more details on what we found.

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— Can people tell which item they are drinking? —

When tasting the types of water (n = 22 people), coffees (n = 14), red wine (n = 14), white wine (n = 9), and colas (n = 21), people were not meaningfully different from chance at predicting which water, which coffee, etc. they were tasting.

For the colas, people guessed correctly 21% of the time, which was a little higher than the 17% accuracy that would be expected if they were guessing at random.

For the waters, people guessed correctly 25% of the time compared to 20% if they were guessing at random.

For the cold coffees, people guessed correctly 19% of the time compared to 20% if they were guessing at random.

For the white wines, people guessed correctly 23% of the time compared to 20% if they were guessing at random.

For the red wines, people guessed correctly 19% of the time compared to 20% if they were guessing at random.

Only on the mystery liquids were people meaningfully accurate, getting 49% correct (which you might argue is still not great). Remember that these were six different fruit juices dyed weird colors, with no context given for what each liquid was (we did not even tell people that they were juices). People had little trouble guessing orange juice (83% correct) or grapefruit juice (74% correct), with pineapple (52% correct) and grape (43% correct) being somewhat more challenging. Apple juice was hard (26% correct – though probably harder than normal because we used a fancy-ish form of Fuji apple juice rather than a more standard brand). Pomegranate juice was insanely hard (4% correct). Note that these accuracies seem to me to be pretty much in line with how commonly (I’d guess) people tend to encounter these different juices.

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— Is more expensive wine better tasting? —

Among white wines (pinot grigios), the second cheapest wine was the favorite, and the very cheapest wine was the second favorite! In fact, the most expensive wine was the least liked! Among red wines (pinot noirs), the second cheapest wine was also the favorite, but the very cheapest was the second LEAST favorite. The most expensive wine was the second favorite, but people still didn’t like it much on average (they rated it as slightly worse than neutral). Overall, there was no seeming correlation between price and how much people liked the wines (in fact, the correlation between average rating and price was a little bit negative, with r=-0.34, though it’s only ten wines here, so take this with a major grain of salt).

One participant mentioned that his favorite wine of the bunch was the second cheapest, so he’s decided to buy lots of that cheap wine in the future instead of more expensive bottles. I think many people could benefit from this lesson (unless they are embarrassed liking cheap wine). Another funny finding is that people didn’t actually enjoy the red wines (pinot noirs) on average. In fact, the average liking score was negative (-0.16)! Though with the small sample size, all we can conclude is that they didn’t especially likely these wines, not that they disliked them. The white wines (pinot grigios), on the other hand, people enjoyed a little bit on average (0.38 average liking, which is between “neither like nor dislike” and “somewhat like.”

Remarkably, people said they liked the water more than both colors of wine (with an average liking rating to the water of 0.78)! Though this finding wasn’t just for wine, as people didn’t like the cold coffee either on average (giving an average rating of -0.04).

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— What’s the tastiest cola? —

As with the other drinks, people had little to no ability to tell which cola was which, but on average, Coke and Pepsi (average liking of 0.71 and 0.38) did better than their diet counterparts (average liking of 0.24 for Diet Coke, 0.33 for Diet Pepsi). Coke Zero did not do well (-0.05), but Wholefoods so-called “cola” did even worse (-0.10). I personally find Diet Pepsi fairly disgusting because the artificial sweetener it uses (sucralose, a.k.a. Splenda) is different than Diet Coke (which uses aspartame), and sucralose tastes very bitter to me. But I’m not in the majority on this.

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— Do people like NY tap water? —

New Yorkers often claim that our tap water is amazing, but not so much in this study. It was the least well-liked of any water tested (0.18 average liking – remember that people couldn’t tell which water they were drinking, so this isn’t due to some form of bias). But tap water is also free and environmentally friendly, so it has a lot going for it. On the other hand, Crystal Geyser (which is about half the price of the other non-tap waters tested) did well, being liked second best (0.91 liking). The fancy/expensive waters (Fiji water, Evian, Smart Water) scored likings of 1.18, 0.77, and 0.86, so Fiji was liked the best overall of all waters, but this could well be a statistical fluke given the small sample size. Incidentally, I previously had a weak belief that I liked Fiji water better than other bottled waters, so I feel slightly vindicated (though I could certainly see my belief on this being wrong, given how bad I am at telling what I’m drinking according to this study).

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— What about iced coffee (served at room temperature)? —

Starbucks (Bottled) Iced Coffee pretty much crushed the coffee competition (average liking of 0.50). The only other coffee that came out with a positive rating was the substantially more expensive Chameleon cold brew (0.21). Another relatively expensive cold brew (Grady’s) did the worst of the bunch (-0.43). People also didn’t like regular hot Starbucks coffee that had been refrigerated (-0.36) or Dunkin Donuts iced coffee (-0.14).

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If you’re curious, here’s a full list of the beverages tested:

WATERS (n = 22 people)

• NY Tap Water ($0 per Liter)

• Crystal Geyser ($0.66 per Liter)

• Smart Water ($1.33 per Liter)

• Evian ($1.33 per Liter)

• Fiji Water ($1.33 per Liter)

COLD COFFEES (n = 14 people)

• Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee ($1.49 per pint)

• Starbucks (Bottled) Iced Coffee ($1.83 per pint)

• Starbuck (Refrigerated) Hot Coffee ($1.96 per pint)

• Grady’s Cold Brew ($2.75 per pint after mixing)

• Chameleon Cold-Brew ($3 per pint after mixing)

COLAS (n = 21 people)

• Coke

• Pepsi

• Wholefoods Cola

• Diet Coke

• Diet Pepsi

• Coke Zero

WHITE PINOT GRIGIO WINES (n = 9 people)

• Santa Marina 2017 ($9 – cheapest)

• Mezzacorona 2017 ($11 – 2nd cheapest)

• Kris 2016 ($14 – middle price)

• Friuli Colli Orientali ($18 – 2nd most expensive)

• Santa Margherita 2017 ($30 – most expensive)

RED PINOT NOIR WINES (n = 14 people)

• Katlyn Vineyards ($7 – cheapest)

• Mirassou ($10 – 2nd cheapest)

• Bourgogne ($20 – middle price)

• Iron Horse ($30 – 2nd most expensive)

• Jayson ($65 – most expensive)

MYSTERY LIQUIDS (dyed) (n = 23 people)

• Orange juice

• Grapefruit juice

• Pineapple juice

• Grape juice

• Apple juice

• Pomegranate juice

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This essay was first written on September 23rd, 2018, and first appeared on this site on November 26th, 2021.