Comparison of methods for generating sensory vocabulary with consumers: A case study with two types of satiating foods

Recent Advances and Future Perspectives in the E-Nose Technologies Addressed to the Wine Industry

Electronic nose devices stand out as pioneering innovations in contemporary technological research, addressing the arduous challenge of replicating the complex sense of smell found in humans. Currently, sensor instruments find application in a variety of fields, including environmental, (bio)medical, food, pharmaceutical, and materials production. Particularly the latter, has seen a significant increase in the adoption of technological tools to assess food quality, gradually supplanting human panelists and thus reshaping the entire quality control paradigm in the sector. This process is happening even more rapidly in the world of wine, where olfactory sensory analysis has always played a central role in attributing certain qualities to a wine. In this review, conducted using sources such as PubMed, Science Direct, and Web of Science, we examined papers published between January 2015 and January 2024. The aim was to explore prevailing trends in the use of human panels and sensory tools (such as the E-nose) in the wine industry. The focus was on the evaluation of wine quality attributes by paying specific attention to geographical origin, sensory defects, and monitoring of production trends. Analyzed results show that the application of E-nose-type sensors performs satisfactorily in that trajectory. Nevertheless, the integration of this type of analysis with more classical methods, such as the trained sensory panel test and with the application of destructive instrument volatile compound (VOC) detection (e.g., gas chromatography), still seems necessary to better explore and investigate the aromatic characteristics of wines.

Critical review of sensory texture descriptors: From pureed to transitional foods for dysphagia patients

Dysphagic people need to change their diet to avoid pain or risk of choking. For example, they can eat texture modified foods (including pureed and transitional foods, that is, food that start with one texture and change into another because of moisture or heating). Simple testing methods proposed by the IDDSI initiative can be performed to characterize texture modified food but these methods are not always relevant for understanding oral texture and mouthfeel properties. Sensory characterization is essential to develop or optimize a food product and to meet consumer's expectations and needs especially for dysphagic persons. However, sensory methods and texture descriptors are complex to target and evaluate for different severity of dysphagia. Sensory texture descriptors can be determined by different methods and assessed in different ways. This review is useful for listing the sensory methods used to generate sensory descriptors to characterize the oral texture of cereal and pureed foods. We found that 55% of the reviewed publications used specific oral texture descriptors and that 17 descriptors could be identified as the most used and relevant for all the products studied (sticky), for pureed (e.g., cohesiveness, floury, and soft) and for cereal-based foods (e.g., hard, fatty, and crispy). These results should be considered to facilitate the choice of sensory texture descriptors in future studies on pureed and transitional foods such as cereal-based foods according to the IDDSI level. This review also demonstrates that it is difficult to find a consensus between studies using different evaluation methods for the same descriptor.

Effects of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Visual Cues on Consumer Emotion and Purchase Intent: A Case of Ready-to-Eat Salad

With increasing demand for ready-to-eat (RTE) fresh vegetables, it is important to understand how visual information cues, both intrinsic and extrinsic, affect consumer perception of these products. This study developed an emotional and wellness lexicon related to RTE salads. Subsequent questionnaires with images of salads were used to quantify consumer (N = 150) emotional and hedonic perceptions related to green color shade, shape/size of pieces, multicolor scheme, product name, and packaging. The different visual cues significantly impacted emotions and their intensities. Qualitatively, feelings of health and wellness predominated across salad samples. Negative emotions were more influenced by size of piece and green-color (intrinsic), while positive emotions were influenced by viewing salads of multiple colors (intrinsic) and packaging (extrinsic). Pale green salads were generally less liked than darker green ones. Values, in one case, ranged from 4.39 to 7.28 (on a 9-point hedonic scale), but naming the product (“iceberg lettuce”) did raise the lowest score to 5.75. The addition of vegetables with orange and purple colors to the salad mix had a positive impact on the perception of pale green salads. This study demonstrated that intrinsic and extrinsic visual cues significantly influenced consumer emotions, hedonic perception and purchase intent of RTE salads, but the effects of extrinsic cues were generally less prominent.

Consumer perception and acceptability of microalgae based breadstick

The demand for sustainable and healthy food is increasing. Therefore, it is necessary to find new sources of functional ingredients for design of novel food products. Microalgae are reliable sources of functional ingredients, ready for exploitation with purpose of production of human food. This work explores consumers' acceptance of novel foods based on microalgae. To achieve natural and realistic eating location, sensory analysis was conducted in a real restaurant in Universitat Politècnica de València. A check-all-that-apply questionnaire and hedonic scale registered the consumers' expectations (N = 85), perceptions and acceptance, before and after taste of typical Valencian breadsticks. Food neophobia can affect acceptability of novel foods, thus, participants completed a test designed to measure their attitudes towards new food. Microalgae breadsticks have distinctive characteristics compared to control breadsticks, such as colour, flavour and odour, because of microalgae presence. Still, those breadsticks were as acceptable as the control breadsticks according to the consumer preferences. Consumers expected more differences amongst both breadsticks before tasting, but they lowered the differences in perception after trying them. Consumers consider that the product is healthier, and they would understand if it had greater expense. We believe this information can be useful for selling / marketing this novel product.