Is a Consumer Panel Able to Reliably Evaluate the Texture of Dairy Desserts Using Unstructured Intensity Scales? Evaluation of Global and Individual Performance

In the last decade, consumer panels have been claimed capable of evaluating the intensity of sensory attributes of food products using intensity scales, providing similar results than trained assessors. In this context, the present study deals with the evaluation of the performance of a consumer panel for texture evaluation of milk desserts, based on global and individual performance, and the comparison with a panel of trained assessor panel. Four milk desserts with different texture characteristics were evaluated by 86 consumers and by a trained panel. Both panels evaluated five texture attributes using unstructured intensity scales. Consumers and trained assessors showed very similar discriminative capacity and reproducibility for all the evaluated texture characteristics. However, the consumer panel showed lack of consensus in its evaluations and individual scores for most consumers were not able to significantly discriminate between samples. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Results from the present work show that although average data for attribute intensity from a consumer panel might be valid and comparable with data from a quantitative descriptive analysis performed by a panel of trained assessors, high variability among consumers exists. Therefore, care must be taken when using intensity scales to study consumers' perception of the sensory characteristics of food products, which suggests that more appropriate methodologies should be developed.