SUBJECTIVE

EVALUATION OF FOOD

Rohan Mukherjee (2021CTM013)

M.Sc Food Processing and Nutrition science// School of Community Science and Technology
 Introduction
• The individual consumer choice, combined
with decisions of countless other consumers
dictates the quality of produced food.
• Sensory evaluation is a scientific descipline
that analyses and measures human responses
to the composition of food products, i.e.
Appearance, odour, texture, temperature and
taste.
How Human experience their food
Subjective v/s Objective
 Importance
• To detect similarities/differences.
• To evaluate an existing food product against
benchmark sample
• To analyze for further improvements based on
market feedback.
• To study a particular property in a food product
• To obtain feedback data in order to make
decisions and carry out suitable modification in a
food product
 Trained Panel (Laboratory Panel)
• Trained panels provide answers to two general questions
relating to the sensory properties of foods:

o Is there a difference between or among stimuli?

o What are the direction and the intensity of differences?

• The trained panels should ideally have 5 to 10 members .

• The panel should be able to establish the intensity of a sensory

characters of overall quality of a food.
 Discriminative and Communicative
Panel (Semi-Trained Panel)
• The panellists may not be trained formally but they
should be capable of following instructions given at
the evaluation session.
• The panel should consist of about 25 to 30 members
• Used to find the acceptability of preference of final
products as a preliminary screening programme to
select a few for large scale consumer trials.
Untrained Panel (Consumer Panel)
• The members of the untrained panel should
be selected at random from the potential
consumers in a market area.
• The number of panelists should be large
enough.
• The findings should be based on at least 100
independent judgements.
 Qualifications for Panelists
• The panelists particularly for the trained and Discriminative
and Communicative (D&C) panels should have the following
qualifications:
– Sound health without any defects affecting sensory perception;
– Average sensitivity;
– Capability of independent judgement;
– Ability to concentrate, train and learn;
– Intellectual curiosity and interest in quality evaluation work;
– Willingness to spend time in evaluation and submission to
periodic tests;
– Freedom from prejudices in respect of a particular food product;
– Food enthusiast having the liking for trying different types of
foods.
 Sensory Panel Room
• Controlled temperature (20 °C - 22 °C) and RH 40± 5%
• Suitable lighting in booths.
• Suitable utensils for different foods.
• Low noise level
• Testing room should be separate from the production
area.
 Discrimination/ Difference Tests
•Paired Comparison Test
oTaste samples and identify
difference in a specific attribute
•Triangle Test
oTaste each sample and identify
the odd sample or find the two
that are identical.
•Duo Trio Test
oTaste the samples and
determine which is the same as
the reference
 Ranking Test
• Ranking of food samples according to a
specific property e.g. Sweetness
• Ranking of food samples according to the
tester’s preference to find out the popularity of
each food sample
 Single sample test
• The panelist is asked to indicate the presence
or absence and/or intensity of a particular
quality.
• Analyses of two or more samples evaluated at
different times, by a different set of panelists
can be compared.
 Hedonic rating
The method relies on panelist’s capacities to report directly
and reliably, their feelings of like and dislike.
 Numerical Scoring test
• One or more samples are presented to each
panellist.
• Panellist evaluates each samples on a specific
scale for a particular characteristics indicating
the rating of the sample.
 Composite Scoring Test
• The rating scale is defined so that specific
characteristic of a product are rated separately.
• This method is helpful in grading products and
comparison of quality attributes by indicating
which characteristic is at fault in the food
product.
 Sensitivity test
• These tests are used to select and train panel
members for evaluating the quality of products
containing spices, sugar and salt.
• Criteria of response in determining threshold
include detection threshold (awareness of
change from some neutral background) and
recognition threshold (point at which the
stimulus becomes identifiable).
 Descriptive Tests
• Descriptive tests are carried out
by a small group of highly trained
panellists.
• These are specialised tests where
the panellists are asked to rate
particular aspects of the flavor of
a particular product on a scale.
• For example; juiciness, a textural
attribute of meat might be evaluated
on a scale consisting of terms
extremely juicy, moderately juicy,
slightly juicy, slightly dry, moderately
dry and extremely dry.