1. Perception of UK Milk Chocolate in the 21st Century…Where to go next
Background
Chocolate is widely enjoyed all around the world, and the UK ranks seventh in overall chocolate consumption. Each year, Brits eat 660,900 tons of chocolate per year, which equates to an average of about 3 bars per person per week. (1) Knowing what consumers enjoy about chocolate is very important to manufacturers. When businesses know what consumers like, they can alter their product to what people prefer and therefore, sell more chocolate. The study we performed investigated different attributes of different brands of chocolate. These attributes included taste, flavor, texture, odor, and mouth feel of the chocolate.
Methods
Sensory Profiling: A sensory panel of University students (n=24) developed a consensus vocabulary of nineteen attributes. Samples (n=4) were assessed by panellists using unstructured line scales in individual booths. The test was replicated twice by most assessors.
Data Analysis: Profiling data was analyzed by Senpaq.
Figure 1 shows that Cadbury chocolate was perceived to have much less of an artificial taste by the panelists. Generally, this is a good thing since artificial taste is not often seen as desirable. An issue with the artificial flavor attribute, however, is that it can be interpreted differently by different assessors.
Only one attribute had no significant difference between samples, which was mouth coating after effect.
Results
We found that there were significant differences between almost all of the samples.
One attribute that had significant differences between the samples was the attribute “artificial flavor”.
Fig 2: Differences in mouthcoating perception
The amount of sugar, milk, or emulsifiers in the chocolate could be similar in each of the chocolate brands, thus explaining why there is no significant differences between the samples.
Conclusions
An area of research that can be further explored given this information is artificial flavor. Researchers for chocolate companies can find out what artificial flavors, specifically, they are picking up in the chocolate. Once they discover what flavors consumers are identifying as artificial, they can change their formula to minimize the artificial flavor. For example, this could be using real vanilla as opposed to artificial vanilla flavoring, if that is what consumers are picking up on. Of course, this solution is more complicated because changing certain ingredients could change the cost of production of the chocolate. However, it is a good place to start to make a more enjoyable chocolate for consumers.
References (1) “Chocolate Facts and Figures” Divine Chocolate Web 6 Jan 2015
Acknowledgements
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Contact information
Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AP , UK
Fig : Differences in artificial flavor perception between samples