The sweetness (part II)

Flaw number 1 in my coffee sweetener test was that, ever since the caffeine detox I have been trying to keep the intake down to one small cup in the morning. Number 2 was that, not only had I already had the early cup but Fridays, because of Coffee Klatch, I wind up having a little bit more than usual. So, I didn’t really want coffee to begin with when they came to get me for the study at 4 pm. 3 was that they didn’t specify what cup size they would be presenting me with and I was surprised at the large drink placed in front of me when I had expected the smaller size I normally get. Coffee, for me at the small size, is complete with 3 Equals, so thats what I worked to earn even though I didn’t want the coffee to begin with.

Had i known the coffee would be a bigger size the outcome would have definitely been different since that size I will usually put 7 or 8 Equals in. I don’t know if it would have been different in that I wouldn’t have worked for any Equals because, to get 7, was a lot of button pushing for something I didn’t care for at the moment anyways. Or maybe the outcome would have been different in the way that I would have stuck it out and worked for all 7 knowing thats what I would normally put in a cup that size.

I told the lab techs about these contributing factors and sort of felt like I maybe hadn’t provided them with a good enough result template. I guess, though, that there is really no correct or incorrect way to provide our information. I suppose thats the reason behind it being an ongoing study. Well, I did what I could. Hopefully they’ll get some of those result-altering kinks worked out in the future. Who knows. I did my part, it way definitely interesting to say the least, and now thats that.

The sweetness

I sat, feeling goofy in my disposable plastic apron, ready for the scheduled research study to commence. The table in front of me in the small lab room had been laid out systematically with 10 clear plastic cups filled with a set amount of cherry Koolaid and accesorized with large red straws. The cups themselves were marked 0-10 in black Sharpie and in front of each was a line of Equal packets corresponding to the cup’s number. With a set of rating sheets in front of me, a call buzzer to my right, a rinse cup, spit bucket, and short stack of napkins to my left, I was primed and ready to take the sweetener test.

The object of this little exercise was to start with a sip of the “o” marked unsweetened Koolaid, roll it in my mouth to taste and rate its sweetness, how much i liked it, and weather or not I wanted more on the corresponding sheet. Then spit, rinse, and repeat with the next cup after first adding the required number of Equal packets. The rule was to do this until i got up to the cup I didn’t like due to too much sweetener and then do one beyond it.

Alone in the small stark room through this I took my time and tried to rate each one as accurately as I could. Having gotten to 10 and still not finding the drink to be more than moderately sweet I wiped my mouth and rang the call button for the lab tech. That was the first part of the study.

Next, after the table had been swept clean of anything having to do with the Koolaid testing, a small laptop was brought in and placed in front of me. This part was titled “work for Equal”. It involved sitting, staring at a screen with an Equal packet pictured on the left and an empty column on the right. With the promise of actually receiving a cup of coffee containing the number of Equal packets you were willing to work for, the button pushing began.

Basically I was asked to just sit and continuously press a key on the computer repeatedly until an Equal packet appeared in the column on the right. Each time a packet appeared it would take almost double the amount of key taps to earn the next packet. If you really wanted all 10 available packets for your coffee it would take up to 40 minutes of continuous button pushing to earn them. All of this was to observe and track just how much a person with an eating disorder relied on artificial sweetener for taste. How long we were willing to sit and do this tedious work just to have that one last packet of Equal. The study, though, was still in its very early pilot phases and was hindered for what I could see as accurate results by some definite flaws.

(to be continued…)