Journal of Sensory Studies最新文献

Food safety has emerged as a critical concern in Vietnam, posing a significant threat to public health due to the prevalence of unsafe foods in the market. Among those most vulnerable to contaminated foods, low-income individuals are significantly affected. This study aimed to investigate the perceptions of food safety among this demographic, utilizing qualitative and quantitative approaches, including focus groups, survey questionnaires, and behavioral experiments using steamed bun as a stimulus. Participants were generally from low-income classes with certain variations in household monthly income. Results from focus groups and the survey highlighted that the factors influencing food purchases included perception of safety, sensory properties, and acceptable pricing. The behavioral experiment revealed that participants with lower incomes were more inclined to select foods containing unsafe chemicals. In conclusion, the study underscored the heightened vulnerability of low-income individuals to unsafe foods, with their perception of food safety bounded by socioeconomic status.

Practical Applications

The study highlights the high risk of contaminated food consumption among low-income individuals in Vietnam, intensified by economic struggles and heightened vulnerability to food insecurity. With this demographic relying on regulations for their health, urgent actions are needed. Governmental policymakers should focus on implementing food safety educational campaigns, promoting affordable and safe alternatives, and providing food aid to economically disadvantaged communities. Mandatory food safety training programs for street food vendors, food handlers, and small businesses, coupled with regular safety practice monitoring, can play a crucial role in mitigating serious consequences. In addition, the research methodologies employed in this study, especially the behavioral experiment approach, can serve as valuable tools for researchers in the field of consumer behavior, enabling them to attain valid and reliable results.

Children are born with an innate capacity to self-regulate their energy intake, but cues from the food environment can undermine children's self-regulation, promoting overconsumption, and challenging energy balance. The size of the portion offered by parents and caregivers has been shown to be correlated with how much food children consume, which is known as the portion size effect. Furthermore, some parental feeding practices may interfere with children's ability to self-regulate. The present research explored parents' perspectives and practices about how much food they offer to their children in Uruguay. Forty-two in-depth interviews with parents of children between 6 months and 5 years old were conducted. Results showed that parental decisions about portion sizes for their children were mostly unconscious and intuitive. Parents were unconcerned about portion sizes, mainly due to the belief that children are able to self-regulate. Although parents identified themselves as mainly responsible for deciding how much food to serve their children, the majority reported to be responsive when their child refuses to eat or finish their meal, or when they request to eat more. Coercive feeding practices were only mentioned by a minority of parents.

Practical Applications

Results from the present work stress the need to raise awareness of children's vulnerability to portion size effects, since portion size selection seems to be a highly arbitrary process. Further research is needed to identify the best approaches to disseminate information among parents and caregivers to promote appropriate portion sizes for children, as well as responsive feeding practices.

The global environmental changes require the development of new food formulations with sustainable ingredients. In this context, legumes could be used to enrich foods with beneficial consequences both on human health and sustainability of the agri-food system. The aim was to evaluate the liking of a whole corn-based formulation including chickpea or red lentil flour with or without providing health and environmental information about legumes. The effect of the conveyed information in subjects with different food neophobia (FN) level as well as the association between FN and different sustainability dimensions were also investigated. A 100% whole-corn sample and two samples added with 20% of chickpea or red lentil flour were tested by 127 consumers in blind, expected, and real conditions. Subjects completed questionnaires about FN, sustainable behavior, perceived environmental impact of food products, beliefs, and attitudes toward sustainable food. Legume-based products were equally liked as the control sample indicating that these food ingredients are promising for the enrichment of polenta samples. The information increased consumers' hedonic expectations. However, incomplete assimilation was found for samples with legumes. When the effect of information was assessed as a function of FN level, a complete assimilation for subjects with low (chickpea sample) and medium (red lentil sample) FN score was found, while no significant effect was seen for subjects with high FN score. A significant negative association was found between FN and sustainability commitment.

Practical Application

The results of the present study demonstrate that the development of sustainable food formulations using legumes is promising and that conveying health and environmental sustainability information contribute to increase consumer acceptance. However, consumers with high levels of FN were insensitive to information and were also those with low interest in sustainability issues. As a practical application, personalized communication strategies should be developed to reach different consumers targets when specific innovations are launched on the market alongside with industry efforts in developing marketing initiatives raising consumers awareness about health and environmental aspects.

Flavor wheels are visual tools built from standardized sensory lexicons that are used in many different industries to improve communication, marketing, and quality discrimination among products. To date, flavor wheels have been developed for spices, coffee, wine, beer, and many other foods and beverages—yet no flavor wheel has been constructed for hard cider. While there is no single established method for constructed flavor wheels, most approaches are based on sensory descriptive analysis (DA) and free word sorting activities that investigate the semantic similarity and dissimilarity of descriptive terms. This research study utilized multiple DA studies for the generation of a sensory lexicon, followed by independent word sorting tasks with cider industry professionals (N = 40) and untrained consumers (N = 58) to establish two flavor wheels that are broadly understandable to a variety of industry stakeholders. Based on the results of DISTATIS and additive tree partitioning, this research showcases a workflow for developing and refining flavor wheels that incorporate both stakeholder and researcher input and can be built upon by other analysts.

Practical Applications

This research demonstrates an accessible methodology for developing flavor wheels that incorporates input from diverse parties and considers the semantic associations of terms used by cider consumers and industry professionals. The proposed methodology is a useful framework for other sensory scientists seeking to efficiently develop flavor wheels for multiple audiences. As a demonstration, this research also delivers two flavor wheels—one that highlights discrepancies in how industry consumers and producers semantically understand sensory experiences compared to trained sensory personnel, and a second wheel that showcases how hard cider can more objectively be described. Together, these flavor wheels are tools for improving sensory communication, education, and marketing in the US hard cider industry.

Miraculin is a glycoprotein present in miracle fruit berries (Richadella dulcifica or Synsepalum dulcificum) known to have taste modifying properties: conversion of sour into sweet taste. So far, research has shown that the effects occur when consuming miracle fruit powder or miracle fruit berries prior to consumption of a sour drink or food product. However, limited research has examined the effects of miraculin consumed within a food or drink product and if there might be any taste-modifying effects on other food and drinks consumed subsequently. This research looks at miraculin, from freeze-dried miracle fruit powder, served within model soft drink formulations at concentrations ethically approved for consumption in soft drink beverages (50 and 80 ppm miracle fruit powder). Three experiments were carried out. The first investigated how long any taste-modifying effects would last following consumption and whether the effects were dose-dependent. Experiment 2 looked at the effect of repeated exposure on perception of sweet, sour, and bitter tastes, whilst experiment 3 explored whether the receptor binding of miraculin in miracle fruit powder would affect sweetness perception of other sweeteners. All results showed minimal effects of using freeze-dried miracle fruit powder within a model beverage at the 50 and 80 ppm levels suggesting that future water-based beverages produced containing low levels of miraculin protein will have little or no taste-modifying effects on foods and beverages subsequently consumed.

Practical Applications

Miraculin, derived from miracle fruit berries, acts as a taste modifier and can change food or drink from tasting sour to tasting sweet. This property is known to occur if either a fresh or freeze-dried powder of miraculin is ingested before food or drink. Miraculin has potential as an ingredient in water-based beverages to enhance sweetness, reduce the undesirable aftertaste associated with some high-potency sweeteners, and to add mouthfeel. However, until now, it was unknown whether, by adding miraculin to a beverage at levels considered safe for human consumption, the taste of other foods consumed with or after the beverage would be affected. Here, we show that a low level of miraculin protein within a water-based beverage has little to no taste-modifying effects on products that are subsequently consumed. Our study therefore opens new avenues for using miraculin as a taste modifier.

Polarized projective mapping (PPM) employs reference samples called poles, positioned in the sensory space, to which samples are compared. This structure enables comparisons across sessions. Selecting the right poles is therefore critical for accurate and reliable comparisons. The current study examined whether simple poles (single fruit juices) or complex poles (fruit juice blends) better represented the sensory space in PPM using a trained panel (n = 12). Thirteen commercial fruit juices, including single juices and blends, were assessed using projective mapping to understand product diversity and select three simple and three complex poles. PPM was then conducted using simple poles in one session and complex poles in another. Six of the thirteen juices used in PPM and three new juices were evaluated to validate the results. Findings indicated that while both simple and complex poles described the product space, simple poles were more able to capture the diversity of the sensory space.

Practical Applications

The study's insights into appropriate pole selection in PPM for complex product sets contribute to the technique's usability and robustness. The guidance on pole selection ensures selected poles anchor the product space, enabling meaningful comparisons across sessions. The finding that simple poles are able to describe complex product sets may assist in minimizing fatigue, a common challenge in evaluating complex products like wine, spirits, and cider. By addressing the unique challenges of complex products, this research enhances the useability of PPM as a valuable tool for comprehensively evaluating sensory characteristics in product categories prone to fatigue and limited consumption.

This study aimed to determine the compromised acceptance threshold (CAT) and the hedonic rejection threshold (HRT) for consumers of sweetened coffee to propose a strategy to reduce the sucrose addition by studying the behavior of consumers of sweetened and unsweetened coffee. From the sample that showed the highest acceptance (control sample, with 12% added sucrose), it was possible to reduce the sucrose addition by up to 18% without compromising acceptance (CAT = 9.76%) and by up to 52% without promoting the rejection of the beverage (HRT = 5.61%). Consumers who were reducing the sucrose addition exhibited a reduction in CAT (6.54%). Consumers of sweetened and unsweetened coffee had different perceptions regarding the sweetened beverage, thus, research involving coffee consumption should be segmented between these two groups. As a strategy, we suggest that the reduction of sucrose should be gradual and associated with information about its health benefits.

Practical Applications

The results are relevant for those interested in understanding the habits of consumers of sweetened and unsweetened coffee and providing an estimate of the tolerance of consumers of sweetened beverages when reducing the sucrose content in coffee beverages. Considering the volume and regularity of coffee consumption by Brazilian consumers, these findings can contribute to the development of a strategy to reduce sugar consumption. This information also supports the production sector in developing ready-to-drink beverages, prepared by industries and coffee shops or available in vending machines, indicating that the concentration of added sugar provided can be reduced, as long as a sufficient amount is maintained not to impair the acceptance of the beverage. Additionally, the data are important for sensory analysis researchers, enabling them to better adapt coffee beverage tasting conditions to consumer expectations and, thus, obtain more reliable results.

Emotion knowledge involves the ability to recognize and express emotions and understand emotional processes. The neural substrates of emotion knowledge include i.a. the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex. These structures are also involved in processing olfactory stimuli and their volume and functional activity have been shown to increase after a period of regular olfactory stimulation (olfactory training, OT). We verified if OT will improve one aspect of emotion knowledge — the ability to match emotional facial expressions. Eighty-three children (39 boys) aged 6–9 years were randomly assigned either to an OT group (OTG) that smelled a set of four odors (lemon, cloves, eucalyptus, rose) twice a day for 12 weeks or to a placebo group that performed the training with odorless stimuli. Children in the OTG (n = 40) matched emotional facial expressions significantly better after OT as compared with their baseline score. This effect was not present in the placebo group (n = 43) whose scores remained the same after OT.

Practical applications

This novel finding suggests the potential of olfactory stimulation in supporting emotion knowledge in children and bridges recent findings in sensory studies, psychophysiology, and emotional development. Further studies are necessary to delineate which aspects of emotion knowledge might be enhanced by OT. In future, OT might be potentially included in programs designed for groups with specific emotion knowledge deficits.