Food Processing - September 2007 - (Page 45)

ery year a different trend emerges geared toward creating healthier foods or tweaking the foods we already know and love to increase their nutritional value. An example of this is the trend in fortification. In a case where you are changing foods to make them healthier, you might need to experiment with several different substitutions. “The goal is to improve the product, which means we want to make it more appealing to the consumer – in most cases by increasing nutritional value – while still maintaining the taste and mouthfeel that the consumer is used to,” continues Chu. “At Mastertaste, we use sensory evaluation labs as a tool to support functions in quality assurance, research & development and even in marketing,” says Chu. Primarily sensory evaluation labs are used in R&D. These labs are important in new product development, product matching and determining stability and shelf life of a product. “We (also) use our sensory evaluation labs as a quality-assurance function to make sure the products we give to our clients are acceptable. We can also use the sensory evaluations labs in a marketing sense. These labs can provide information on consumer preferences that supplement information that food processors may already have about consumer taste preferences.” Play ball Among the industry’s leading experts in sensory evaluation is the NFL. Not the football league – the National Food Laboratory Inc. (www.thenfl.com), Dublin, Calif. The lab uses rigorous quantitative research and reporting procedures to compare and document the taste, smell, appearance or texture of a food, beverage or non-food products. NFL provides the expertise and facilities for everything from focus groups, online research, guidance tests, local and national central location tests (CLTs) and in-home use tests (IHUTs) with complete screening, test administration and full data analysis and reporting. They also conduct concept/product testing, ethnographies and claims validation. One of the NFL’s areas of expertise is the testing of products requiring a high degree of preparation with attention to detail and test protocols. They have versatile and complete booth and test kitchen facilities. While acting on a hunch may result in a great product that sells like hot dogs at a ballpark, the price of being wrong can be considerable. Sensory evaluation can bring as much certainty as possible to an uncertain venture to minimize risk and maximize consumer acceptance. The bottom line is to remove as much of the guesswork as possible so that you can launch your brainchild in a lot less time with a lot less stress. sense more on the web find out more about how processors approach the sensory e quation on www.foodprocessing.com. enter “sensory” in the search box and you’ll uncover more than 50 related articles, p roducts and news items. www.foodprocessing.com http://www.thenfl.com http://www.blueberry.org http://www.foodprocessing.com http://www.blueberry.org http://www.foodprocessing.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Food Processing - September 2007

Contents Editor's Plate Power Lunch NewsBites Regulatory Issues Rollout Food Biz Kids Product Spotlight Next-Generation Manufacturing Models Product Development Ingredients Packaging Show Previews New Product Profiles Toops Scoops

Food Processing - September 2007

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