Fat is an important source of both pleasure and calories in the diet. Dairy products are a major source of fat in the diet, and understanding preferences for fat in fluid milk can potentially inform efforts to change fat consumption patterns or optimize consumer products. Here, patterns of preference for fat in milk were determined in the laboratory among 100 free living adults using rejection thresholds. Participants also answered questions relating to their health concerns, the type of fluid milk typically consumed, and their declared preference for type of milk (in terms of fat level). When revealed preferences in blind tasting were stratified by these measures, we observed striking differences in the preferred level of fat in milk. These data indicate a non-trivial number of consumers who prefer low-fat milk to full fat milk, a pattern that would have been overshadowed by the use of a group mean. While it is widely assumed and claimed that increasing fat content in fluid milk universally increases palatability, present data demonstrate this is not true for a segment of the population. These results underscore the need to go look beyond group means to understand individual differences in food preference.

中文翻译：

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通常消费的牛奶类型和明确的偏好，但健康意识不会影响对牛奶中脂肪的偏好


脂肪是饮食中快乐和热量的重要来源。乳制品是饮食中脂肪的主要来源，了解人们对液态奶中脂肪的偏好可能有助于改变脂肪消费模式或优化消费品。在这里，我们在实验室中使用拒绝阈值确定了 100 名自由生活的成年人对牛奶中脂肪的偏好模式。参与者还回答了与他们的健康问题、通常消耗的液态奶类型以及他们对牛奶类型的偏好（就脂肪水平而言）相关的问题。当通过这些措施对盲品中显示的偏好进行分层时，我们观察到牛奶中脂肪的偏好水平存在显着差异。这些数据表明，有相当多的消费者更喜欢低脂牛奶而不是全脂牛奶，这种模式可能会因使用群体平均值而被掩盖。虽然人们普遍认为和声称增加液态奶中的脂肪含量普遍会增加适口性，但目前的数据表明，对于部分人群来说事实并非如此。这些结果强调需要超越群体手段来了解食物偏好的个体差异。