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Basic quality problems of

food products
CFD20002 : Quality Assurance and Quality Control in Food Industries
Lecture 2

Introduction
• Quality of food - nutrition, food safety and environmental issues.
• Good quality of food has not a constant definition.
• The consumers focuses on physical characteristics of the food products, as
well as abstract (intangible) food characteristics
• Intrinsic characteristics i.e wholesomeness, freshness, nutritional value,
texture, smell, color, fragrance, and flavor)
• Extrinsic characteristics i.e brand, shopping environment, price, origin,
production processes and so on.

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Types of food quality

• There are four different types of food quality (Grunert et al., 1996).
• Product-oriented quality is measured by means of food product’s properties, like fat
percentage, muscle size of meat, sell content in milk, etc.
• Process-oriented quality is concerned with characteristics of the production process,
which are not necessary mirrored in physical characteristics of the product, like the
fulfillment of ecological and ethical production standards.
• Quality control refers to the extent to which product- and process-oriented quality
remains stable at pre-specified levels.
• User-oriented quality is the subjective quality perception of a user.

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Summary about food quality

• Degree to which a food meets expectations

• “High” exceeds expectations
• “Moderate” meets expectations
• “Low” does not meet expectations

Expectations for Food

• “Taste” (appropriate sensory factors) – Appearance, texture, taste, odor, auditory

• Nutrition/Healthful profile
• Convenience & preparation
• Storage shelf life
• Intangible needs & benefits
• Physical structure
• Safety & environmental costs

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Physical

Chemical

Food
Characteristics Biological &
Microbiological

Sensory

Physical

Shape
Color
Appearance
Food Size
Characteristics
Surface condition

Texture

Freshness
Defects

Total solids, etc

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Chemical

Nutritional value

Moisture content
Food
Characteristics Functional value

pH

Food additives

Chem contaminants

Etc

Biological &
Microbiological

Food
Characteristics

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Sensory

Flavor
Food
Aroma
Characteristics
Taste

Texture

Etc

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Physical Attributes
• Physical attributes of food are related with the appearance of food
products, including: Appearance
• Color
• Shape The first
impression
• Size
• Texture
• Viscosity
• Etc.

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COLOR

 Color is the one of the most important image features because it

contains the basic human vision.
 Color significantly affects the consumer perception of quality.
 If the color is unacceptable, the other two major quality factors,
flavor and texture, are not
likely to be judged at all.

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COLOR

• Light is the basic stimulus of colors, it is important to consider the

electromagnetic spectrum.
• Visible light forms only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, with a
spectral range from approximately 390 nm (violet) to 750 nm (red).
• The sensitivity of the eye varies even within this narrow visible range. Under
conditions of moderate-to-strong illumination, the eye is most sensitive to
yellow-green light of about 550 nm.

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Factors affecting color

 Chemical composition
 The appearance of a product as judged by its color often be used to
determine the pigment content of a product, which in turn is often an
index of quality.
 Color measurement can be used to evaluate pigment content
(carotenoid, anthocyanin, chlorophyl, etc.)
 Colorimetry and chromatography can be used to measure the pigment
content of food product.

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Factors affecting color

 Effect of lighting
 The type of light falling on a object will affect the perception of color.
 For example, when green light is directed onto a white sheet of paper,
the paper will appear to be green.
 But within fairly narrow ranges, the human brain will compensate for
small shifts in the color of the lighting because the brain anticipates
what the color should be.

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Factors affecting color

 In food products, it is possible to make products look
better or worse depending on the lighting.
 Lighting in supermarkets is designed for the ability to
make product more favorable. But no single lighting
arrangement is optimum for every food product.
Example :
Cranberry juice under normal fluorescent tube light
with a high blue component will appear almost black,
while under warm fluorescent lighting with a higher
yellow-red component will appear much redder.

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Factors affecting color

 Lighting to improve color appearance had been studied in detail in the
red meat industry.
 It is possible to make cuts of red meat look much redder by illuminating
them with a pink light or by placing a reflector painted red near the
display case.
 However, sometimes this method is considered as a fraud because the
consumer sees the actual color when product is unpacked at home.

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Interaction of color with other senses

 Color seems to have significant effect on the perception of sweetness,

but only have little effect on the perception of saltiness.
 Many studies have shown that solutions colored dark red will
perceived to be sweeter than others of the same sucrose
concentration in lighter colors or distilled water.

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Color scales

• There are three characteristics of light by which a color may

be specified: hue, saturation, and lightness.
• Hue is an attribute associated with the dominant wavelength
in a mixture of light waves, i.e., it represents the dominant
color as perceived by an observer.
• Saturation refers to relative purity or the amount of white
light mixed with a hue.
• Lightness is associated with luminous intensity (light-
reflecting / transmitting capacity).
• Hue and saturation taken together are called chromaticity.

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Color scales-CIE System

• The basic colors however are only three: red, green and blue, and other colors
are derived by mixing these three.
• The Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) defined a system of
describing the color of an object based on three primary stimuli: red (700 nm),
green (546.1 nm), and blue (435.8 nm).
• The amounts of red, green, and blue needed to form any given color are called
the’ ‘tristimulus” values, X, Y, and Z, respectively.
• A plot that represents all colours in x (red)-y (green) coordinates is known as a
chromaticity diagram

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Color scales-CIE System

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Color scales-CIE System

• Sometimes, tristimulus systems of representation of colors are not

easily understood by the users in terms of object color. Other color
scales therefore were developed to relate better to how we perceive
color, simplify understanding.
• A 3-dimensional rectangular L, a, b, color space was evolved, in which
at L (lightness) axis – 0 is black and 100 is white, a (red-green) axis –
positive values are red; negative values are green and zero is neutral,
and b (blue-yellow) – positive values are yellow; negative values are
blue and zero is neutral.

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Color scales-CIE System

• There are two popular L, a, b color scales in use today – Hunter L, a, b,

and CIE L∗, a∗, b∗.
• They are similar in organization, but will have different numerical
values.
• Hunter L, a, b and CIE L∗, a∗, b∗ scales are both mathematically
derived from X, Y, Z values.
• Hunter scale is over expanded in blue region of color space, while CIE
scale is over expanded in yellow region. The current recommendation
of CIE is to use L∗, a∗, b∗.

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Color scales-CIE System

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Size
 Size is very important feature since it can determine
the loss of products during processing and the final
product yields.
 Size can be measured in three dimensions such as
volume in the real world. However, it is usually reduced
to one or two dimensional measurements.
 Size features include weight, volume, diameter, area,
surface area, perimeter, length, skeleton length and
width.

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Size
Skeleton length

 Area has become a very popular measurement for the quality

evaluation of fruit and vegetables such as the determination of
tomato ripeness.
 Length measurements might also be used especially for those long
shape food products such as cucumber, banana, which usually
measured by skeleton length, mid-line of the products.

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Size
• Some other measurements of size:
• Feret’s diameter: determined by the distance of 2
pixels with the smallest and the largest coordinates
• Major axis: the longest line that can be drawn across
food products, calculated by measuring the
distance between two boundary pixels and by
taking the longest
• Minor axis, which the longest line that can be drawn
through the object perpendicular to the major axis.

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Size
• In meat industry, the calculation of surface area and
volume of ellipsoid meat joints can be used to
determine shrinkage during processing.
• The measurement of area is also important in meat ---
the area of marbling/intramuscular fat and the overall
area to determine the marbling score.
• Marbling is that webbing of creamy white fat that riddles a
cut of beef, and which gives it a spectacular tenderness,
juiciness and richness. This score is called BMS or Beef
Marble Score.

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THE JAPANESE MARBLE SCORE SCALE

• In the Japanese system, the BMS scale goes from 3 to 12, with 3 being the basic minimum
of marbling a steak should have, and 12 being a steak that is almost white with marbling
(because BMS scores of 1 and 2 show almost no marbling, they’re not even considered).
• More marbling means a tenderer, creamier texture, and is what Wagyu and Kobe beef
connoisseurs highly prize, so the higher the BMS score, the more expensive the beef is.

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Size

• Size features can also be used for sorting of fish, and many other
products such as pizza, wheat grains.

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Shape

• Shape is generally referred to the profile or physical

structure of objects geometrically.
• Conventional measurements of shape called size
dependents --- try to combine different size
parameters together to form dimensionless
expressions for shape description.

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Shape

• Some shape measurements applied to food industries:

• Compactness: the ratio of area over the square perimeter ---
effective for perfect circle food products
• Elongation: the ratio of major axis over the minor axis
• Convexity: the ratio of convex perimeter over the perimeter
• Roughness: the ratio of area over the square major axis

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Texture

• Texture can be generally correlated to the sensory properties of food

products.
• Texture can also be used to determine chemical or physical properties
of food products --- contain more information about chemical or
physical properties than color and size.
• Textural properties of food product will be change during storage.
• The importance of texture in the overall acceptability of foods varies
widely, depending upon the type of food:

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• Critical:
Texture
Food in which texture is the dominant quality characteristic,
such as meat, potato chips, cornflakes, etc.
• Important:
Food in which texture makes a significant but not a
dominant contribution to the overall quality, for example
most fruits, vegetables, cheeses, bread, cereal based foods,
candy, etc.
• Minor:
Food in which texture makes a negligible contribution to the
overall quality, for example most beverages, thin soups, etc.

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Texture
Some of common texture vocabs:
 Crisp
 Dry
 Fatty
 Juicy  Watery
 Creamy  Sticky
 Crunchy  Tough
 Chewy  Greasy
 Smooth  Slippery
 Hard  Firm
 Tender
 Coarse
 Soft
 Springy
 etc

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Texture

• The textural properties of food are group of physical characteristics

that arise from the structural elements of food, are sensed primarily
by the feeling of touch, are related to the deformation, disintegration,
and flow of the food under a force and are measured objectively by
function of mass, time and distance.

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Texture

• Relation between textural parameters and popular nomenclature:

• Mechanical characteristics
Primary parameters Secondary parameters Popular terms

Hardness Soft – firm – hard

Cohesiveness Brittleness Crumbly – crunchy – brittle

Tender – chewy – tough
Chewiness Short – mealy – pasty – gummy

Gumminess

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Texture
Primary parameters Secondary parameters Popular terms
Viscosity Thin - viscous

Elasticity Plastic – elastic

Adhesiveness Sticky – tacky - gooey

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Texture

• Geometrical characteristics
Primary parameters Secondary parameters Popular terms

Particle size and shape Gritty, grainy, coarse, etc

Particle shape and Fibrous, cellular,

orientation crystalline, etc.

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Texture

• Other characteristics
Primary parameters Secondary parameters Popular terms

Moisture content Dry – moist – wet -

watery

Fat content Oiliness Oily

Greasiness Greasy

Source: Bourne (2002)

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References

• Bourne, M.C. (2002). Food Texture and Viscosity: Concept and

Measurement 2nd Ed. Academic Press. New York.
• Francis, F,J. (1995). Quality as influenced by color. Food Quality and
Preference 6 : 149-155.
• Zheng, C., Sun DW., and Zheng L. (2006). Recent developments and
applications of image features for food quality evaluation and
inspection – a review. Food Science and Technology 17: 642-655.

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