Análise sensorial: uma revisão sobre os métodos sensoriais e aplicação dos testes afetivos em alimentos práticos para consumo

Abstract

Changes in the population's eating habits have culminated in a greater demand for foods with little or no preparation, and in this context those that are practical and quick to consume and that can be easily transported have spread. To keep up with consumer demand, industries need to put innovations on the market frequently, and for successful acceptance of these products, they have a tool to support them, the sensory analysis. This is capable of evoking, measuring, analyzing and interpreting reactions to the characteristics of foods and materials through various tests, classified into discriminative, descriptive and affective methods. The discriminatives essentially promote the differentiation between products, while the descriptive ones allow the complete description, in a qualitative and quantitative way, of the products through attributes. Affective methods are aimed at obtaining the consumer's opinion about the products and, for this reason, they are among the most used in the food industry. Considering the market growth of fast and practical consumer products, the objective of this work was to present a review of the main sensory tests used by the food industry, with emphasis on affective tests with consumers, and a survey of studies that show the use of the latter in this category products, which incorporates foods such as snacks, cookies, donuts and beverages. Based on the works analyzed in this study, the wide use of the hedonic scale was noticed, along with the purchase intention, showing the flexibility and ease of use of these scales. However, for this food segment, there was a large number of studies aimed at a small contingent of products, which reinforces the need to expand research to include more items, such as extruded snacks, ginger soda and kombucha, among others.