Sensory Properties of Foods - Essay Example

College Question Commercial breakfast cereal of my choice is banana-frosted flakes. Kellogg’s company in United s manufactures this cereal. It has the best sensory properties that make it one of the best selling cereals in the world. Sensory properties A. Color 1. The Munsell student color for this cereal is yellow (number 14). 2. The colors are the same. This is because the cereal looks attractive in the same color. 3. Munsell Student color chart is very important more especially in communicating about colors. It gives clear description and importance of different colors and the way they can be used to brand different products differently. 4. An alternative color measurement technique is by use of the computer vision technology. This is where computer is used to brand colors to different types of food. This technique is the most appropriate because it can analyze each pixel found on every food surface. It can also quantify the characteristics of the food’s surfaces and the defects that can possibly be on that surface. B. Flavors 1. Flavor profile a. Smell Different foods have different smells. This due to the different types of perfumes used during the manufacture of the foods. The perfumes used can be either natural or artificial. Natural perfumes can extract from natural sources where they are purified before they are added to the food. On the other hand, artificial sources are produced by mixing different naturally produced aroma together. This will produce different smell from the two natural sources (Gacula 2008). b. Taste The taste cereals vary from one cereal to another. Tastes can be evaluated from sweet, bitter, sour, and salty. This is each cereal tastes differently from each other. This can be due to the natural sources or the different ways in which they are manufactured. Salty taste can be due to the salts added during processing of the cereal in the factory. Sweet taste is mainly caused by addition of sugary flavors to then cereal during manufacturing. Bitter and sour tastes are caused by addition of acidic flavors to then cereal. This will increase the acidic content of the cereal. Organic or inorganic amino acids are the one used to produce the sour tastes to then cereals (Gacula 2008). c. Color Color of every food can add flavor to it. Colors have different effects on cereals. Colors like red, can add sweetness to the cereals as compared to the dark colors. Colors also can be used to as a force of attraction to the customers. People are attracted by colors in different ways. When choosing the color to used in a particular food, people’s interests should be considered to ensure that food is highly marketed. One can be attracted by the way food is colored before they even taste that food (Jelen, 2012). 2. Selection of panelists Selection of panels to train as analysts in sensory analysis should be done in a very careful way. This is because this field requires the best candidates are the one selected and they have the appropriate characteristics that the sensory analysis requires. Those who fail the test should not be compromised. The candidates to be selected should have the potential for training and must have specific attributes that they are going to use in performing particular sensory tasks (Piggott, 2010). Candidates can be recruited through personal data or seminars. During this selection process, many activities take place. These include telling the candidates what is going to take place for example screening objectives, duration of test, procedures to be followed and the time commitment that they have since it is a long process before it is completed. Background information of the candidates should be recorded. This information may include: I. Interests- for a candidate to perform well, interest must be put forward first. Interest will enable the candidate understand the importance of sensory testing and will make him or her ready for the work. II. Availability- each candidate should be 100% available during the training. This is because on e should miss even a bit of training that is going on since everything is going to be tested after the training. However, the candidates are encouraged to avail themselves daily until the training and testing is completed. Missing even a day of training may make one fail the test. III. Health- every individual to select must be of good health. No one should be allergic to some chemicals, tastes or smell. This is because allergies may hinder the way the candidate is going to make judges on the products of the company. Color-blinded candidates should not be selected in the panel since they give wrong judges when it comes to color tests. IV. Attitude about the product class- each candidate must taste all the products provided during the test. Those who hate a particular products should not be selected because they are going to be biased when it come to rating those products. V. Articulateness- candidates to be selected should have good communication skills. This is going to help them when describing company’s products. Testing the panelist The selected candidates are now ready for testing. All of them have passed the selection criteria and they have to be tested ensure that they are ready for sensory testing activities. The test will involve many activities. The first test will be screening test. The purpose of this test is to ensure that the candidates have the following qualifications: Normal sensory ability Good personality like motivation and cooperation with others Interested in sensory testing and evaluation One of the screening test methods to be used is the triangle test. In this test, the selected candidates are given three samples whereby two are identical and the other is completely different from the others. Questions on the samples are asked and the candidates who give the right answers are selected as the panelists. The candidates can be tested on identifying the taste of some samples. The provided samples will be sweet, salty, bitter and sour. Each panelist is provided with a certain amount of the samples and must be able to describe each sample correctly. If a panelist fails the first test on the test, he or she is given the second chance to test the sample and give a different description. The panelists are also tested on the odor of the samples. They are required to describe correctly the odor that a particular sample have. They are needed to identify 20 different types’ of odorants. Fifteen of the odorants are familiar to them but five are rarely encountered. The company in processing its products uses these odorants. Those who pass the test are granted the job while those who fail are re-tested until they familiarize themselves with the odorants. C. Texture 1. Texture profiles include hard, viscosity, greasy, fine. Before mastication(surface)=hard First bite/chew=fracturability Mastication=gumminess Residual=viscosity Swallow=fine 2. The panelists using mouthfeel method of assessing can assess these attributes. The mouth feels characteristics come in due to breakdown force in the mouth. These characteristics include viscosity, stickiness, pulpy chewiness, hardness, wetness, gumminess and many more. However, all these characteristics are measured in different ways. Hardness is the force needed to break the food within some distance. Chewiness is the number of chews required to make the food ready for swallowing. Gumminess is the amount of energy needed to break a semi-liquid material ready for swallowing. Wetness is the amount of moisture that a particular food can hold it its surface. Heaviness is the weight that food imposes on the tongue (Hutchings, 1994). 3. Each attribute has its own way of evaluation in each order of appearance. i. Hardness- this evaluated by lacing the food between molar teeth and then biting it down gently. The force required to compressed the food is the evaluated. ii. Gumminess- food is placed in the mouth and the tongue is used to manipulate it against the palate. Amount of manipulation to disintegrate the food is then evaluated. iii. Viscosity- here, the food is placed between the molar teeth and then compressed. Amount of deformation that the food undergoes is evaluated before the rapture. iv. Chewiness- this is evaluated by counting the number of chews that are used to make the food to be in the state of swallowing. v. Fracturability- food is placed the molar teeth and is chewed until it cracks. Therefore, the force that made the food move away from the teeth evaluates fracturability. 4. Hardness: its anchor point is the molar teeth Gumminess: its anchor point is the tongue Viscosity: its anchor point here is the molar teeth Chewiness: the anchor point here is the teeth Question 2 1. Panelists at times may use the same description to mean the same thing. This is because some panelists cannot use extreme description on some samples while others may use extreme description to some samples that do not need extreme description. This is because not all people can rate the same sample with the same degrees. 2. To make the three samples nearly equal, some features were to be considered. The first thing is that, the temperature of all the samples should be equal. This is to ensure that all samples are going too tasted by the group of the panelist without any sample being hotter or colder than the other, this is because same substances can taste differently when they are subjected to different levels of temperatures (Otles, 2012). Another instruction to be followed before rating the samples is that the quantity given to every panelist should be equal. This is because if one panelist is given larger amount of a particular sample, he/she may give extreme characteristic of the sample if the amount of the sample given was more as compared to the other samples. In addition, the color of the samples must be nearly the same. This is to reduce biasness when it comes to rating the samples by the panelist. Different colors to the samples may attract different panelist differently. This will cause biasness since some panelist can rate samples with their favorite colors extremely beyond the limits of the samples. Some people also may hate some samples simply because of the colors they have before they even taste them. The samples also presented with standardized sugar level in them. This is to ensure that no sample has more sugar level than the others do. This is because not all of the panelists like sugary substances. Some may like sugary samples while others may prefer the ones with less sugar content. However, sugar contents should vary in an extreme way (Nollet, 2011). The questions that the panelists are asked should be the same in each sample to avoid varying answers caused by different questions asked. This will ensure that the errors in the data are avoided. This means that there are three types of tests to be carried out during the activity. The panelists should also have some basic background information on the ancient grain. This will change the way they are going to rate the samples. Panelists who do not have information on the ancient grain may hate the samples just because they know that they are produced from an ancient grain. This will change the way they are going to rate the samples. 3. To analyze the results of the panel, mean of the samples is going to be used. Sample a mean This is obtained by adding all the results of the sample A and divide by the number of panelist that is 25. The total result is 157. The sum is divided by 25 and the mean becomes 6.25 Sample B mean This is obtained by adding all the results of sample B and dividing it by 25. The total result is 177. This sum divided by 25 and the mean becomes 7.08 Sample C mean This is obtained by adding all the results of sample C and dividing the result by 25. The total result is 156. This sum is divided by 25 and the mean becomes 6.24. However, the sample with the highest mean is sample B followed by sample A and the least is the sample C. The mean of sample A and C are almost equal. This shows that they have almost the same features that made the panelists to rate them with almost equal likes and dislikes. Sample B has the highest rating meaning it is the preferred product of the company. The mean of sample A and C shows that these two samples have nearly the same characteristics. This makes them have almost equal means. The possibility is that they have the same odor, taste and texture. 4. The recommendation to the manager is that sample B should be chosen for the market because it has the highest mean on the hedonic scale. This shows that many people in the market are going to like the product. Reference Birch, G. G., Brennan, J. G., Parker, K. J., & National College of Food Technology. (1977). Sensory properties of foods. London: Applied Science Publishers. Dickinson, E., & Royal Society of Chemistry (Great Britain). (2005). Food colloids: Interactions, microstructure and processing. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry. Gacula, M. C., & C., Gacula Jr., Maximo. (2008). Descriptvie Sensory Analysis in Practice. John Wiley & Sons. Hutchings, J. B. (1994). Food colour and appearance. London: Blackie Academic & Professional. Jelen, H. (2012). Food flavors: Chemical, sensory and technological properties. Boca Raton: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group. Lyon, D. H. (1992). Guidelines for sensory analysis in food product development and quality control. London: Chapman & Hall. 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