Abstract
An inquiry of the taste preference was made to high school students ranging from 15 to 17years of age (229 males and 300 females) so as to find their tendency of the preference toward sweet, sour, salty, and bitter tastes. Respondents were classified according to the following five items as factors of the taste preference: (A), the number of days of absence from school; (B), whether or not they were anemic; (C), whether or not taking part in extra curricular activities; (D), sex and grade groups; (E), Rohrer's Index. Hayashi's Quantification Method III was applied to find out relations between the taste preference and the factors. The results indicated the followings: (1), in all of the five items, males have a tendency to prefer salty foods and females to prefer sweet and sour foods; (2), the taste preference for sweet foods such as chocolate or ice cream was related to the factor (A) and the preference for sour and salty foods such as lemon, salted sour plum, salted vegetables and salted squid gut was related to the factors of (B) and (C). In the classifying according to the factors of (D) and (E), the difference of the taste preference was not observed.
