The magic water test. An affective paired comparison approach to evaluate taste sensitivity in pre-schoolers

Children in pre-school age present a limited cognitive development, a restricted vocabulary and a short attention span, which do not allow conducting classical taste sensitivity measures as developed for adults. The aim of this study was to develop and validate an age-appropriate protocol for sensitivity testing of the five basic tastes with pre-schoolers. One hundred and forty children aged 3–4 years (mean age 46.3 months, SD 3.4) performed a paired comparison task consisting of discriminating water from ‘‘magic water” by relying on their affect. In order to accommodate the age group, the task was gamified and did not require verbal responses. Sweet (sucrose, ranging from 0.94 to 4.32 g/l), sour (citric acid monohy- drate, 0.20–0.38 g/l), umami (monosodium glutamate, 0.17–0.49 g/l), salty (sodium chloride, 0.34– 0.98 g/l), and bitter (quinine hydrochloride dihydrate, 0.0014–0.0038 g/l) water dilutions were tested at four levels. Subsets of about 20 children per taste participated in retest sessions. Individual sensitivity scores were derived in two manners, following the experimenter’s success criterion (water with taste is classified as magic) and the child’s criterion for ‘‘magic water” (children’s individual magic-labelling strategies). Results show that the protocol was highly engaging, that the children performed the task consistently, and that the children’s performances were not dependent on cognitive level differences, thus validating the protocol for this study. On average, the children were clearly more sensitive to sour stimuli than to sweet and bitter stimuli, suggesting that the selected dilutions were not equivalent across tastes. Different sensitivity distributions of the children were obtained across taste modalities and scoring cri- teria. The key elements of an age-appropriate protocol for pre-schoolers are discussed

Consumers' acceptance of innovations in traditional cheese. A comparative study in France and Norway.

This study explores consumers' acceptance of innovations in traditional cheese in France (n=120) and Norway (n=119). The respondents were presented with 16 photographs of a traditional cheese from their respective countries, varying according to six factors: pasteurisation, organic production, omega-3, packaging, price and appropriateness. For each of the scenarios the consumers indicated their willingness to buy the cheese on a nine-point scale. Results show that consumers' willingness to buy traditional cheese is highly driven by price, appropriateness and pasteurisation in both countries. However, on average consumers in the French sample prefer buying raw milk cheese, while consumers in the Norwegian sample prefer buying pasteurised cheese. These general trends are led by a pro-raw milk segment in France and a pro-pasteurised milk segment in Norway. Several interaction effects involving appropriateness are detected, indicating the importance of the consumption context on the acceptance of innovations in traditional cheese. On a general level, the results indicate that well-accepted innovations in traditional cheese are those that reinforce the traditional and authentic character of the product

A new approach to sensitivity testing with 4-year olds

In order to have valid results from sensory experiments with pre-schoolers, there is a need to match the sensory test to the abilities of children. A new approach for sensitivity testing with 4- year olds was therefore developed to accommodate their abilities as well as to engage them in the task. Inspired by the principles of authenticity tests, a protocol was designed to induce an affective response to a paired comparison test. This protocol included a story with magical characters, and the children were asked to identify if water samples with different concentrations of diluted basic tastes were “magic” water or regular water. Water was labelled as “magic” to trigger an emotional response, not an analytical one, which is more dependent on the level of cognitive processing. A pre-test on sweet and sour tastes conducted with 32 preschool children in Autumn 2014 indicated that children were able to understand the procedure, were engaged in the test, and could differentiate water from “magic” water in the majority of comparisons. Based on this, a more comprehensive protocol was developed, including all basic tastes with four different dilutions each. Paired comparisons are used, each time pairing a glass of plain water to water with a basic taste. The first session investigates the children’s sensitivity for sweet (sucrose), sour (citric acid), and umami (glutamate) taste in water, successively. The second session examines sensitivity for salt (sodium), and bitter (quinine) taste in water. The protocol includes a retest to investigate the reliability of the procedure with a subset of the children. The study will be carried out in Spring 2015 with 135 children aged 4 years old from 15 kindergartens. Results on children’s performance and reliability in the sensitivity test will be presented. The children’s understanding of the test will be discussed in light of their response bias when labelling water as “magic”, using the response criterion B

Predicting liking from consumption measurements based on camera recording. Application to the study of food preferences in children in a school restaurant

Predicting liking from consumption measurements based on camera recording. Application to the study of food preferences in children in a school restaurant. 1. Granqvist Culinary Arts & Meal Science Symposiu

Cooking chicken at home: Common or recommended approaches to judge doneness may not assure sufficient inactivation of pathogens.

About one third of foodborne illness outbreaks in Europe are acquired in the home and eating undercooked poultry is among consumption practices associated with illness. The aim of this study was to investigate whether actual and recommended practices for monitoring chicken doneness are safe. Seventy-five European households from five European countries were interviewed and videoed while cooking chicken in their private kitchens, including young single men, families with infants/in pregnancy and elderly over seventy years. A cross-national web-survey collected cooking practices for chicken from 3969 households. In a laboratory kitchen, chicken breast fillets were injected with cocktails of Salmonella and Campylobacter and cooked to core temperatures between 55 and 70°C. Microbial survival in the core and surface of the meat were determined. In a parallel experiment, core colour, colour of juice and texture were recorded. Finally, a range of cooking thermometers from the consumer market were evaluated. The field study identified nine practical approaches for deciding if the chicken was properly cooked. Among these, checking the colour of the meat was commonly used and perceived as a way of mitigating risks among the consumers. Meanwhile, chicken was perceived as hedonically vulnerable to long cooking time. The quantitative survey revealed that households prevalently check cooking status from the inside colour (49.6%) and/or inside texture (39.2%) of the meat. Young men rely more often on the outside colour of the meat (34.7%) and less often on the juices (16.5%) than the elderly (>65 years old; 25.8% and 24.6%, respectively). The lab study showed that colour change of chicken meat happened below 60°C, corresponding to less than 3 log reduction of Salmonella and Campylobacter. At a core temperature of 70°C, pathogens survived on the fillet surface not in contact with the frying pan. No correlation between meat texture and microbial inactivation was found. A minority of respondents used a food thermometer, and a challenge with cooking thermometers for home use was long response time. In conclusion, the recommendations from the authorities on monitoring doneness of chicken and current consumer practices do not ensure reduction of pathogens to safe levels. For the domestic cook, determining doneness is both a question of avoiding potential harm and achieving a pleasurable meal. It is discussed how lack of an easy "rule-of-thumb" or tools to check safe cooking at consumer level, as well as national differences in contamination levels, food culture and economy make it difficult to develop international recommendations that are both safe and easily implemented