Integration of an Objective Approach Focused on the Consumer to Evaluate the Quality of Processed Brussels Sprouts

DANIELA OLIVERA; SONIA VIÑA ; RICARDO FERREYRA; ALICIA MUGRIDGE; RODOLFO MASCHERONI; ALICIA CHAVES

Food and Nutrition Sciences

Scientific Research Publishing

Lugar: Irvine, California; Año: 2011 vol. 2 p. 1011 - 1017

2157-9458

There are only a few research works focused on the integration of the objective analysis of the quality of frozen vegetables and the preference of consumers for these products. The aim of the present work was to investigate the consumption patterns of Brussels sprouts, the importance degree that consumers give to main attributes, and the construction they make about the product quality. For this aim, a series of surveys (snowball sampling method) were performed to consumers of four cities of Argentina. Also, it was determined the effect of different industrial operations (two blanching procedures, freezing and cooking) on texture, color, total chlorophyll content and ascorbic acid content of processed sprouts, with respect to the fresh product. It was defined a function Z (overall quality) to integrate the information obtained by both approaches. Taking into account the relative importance assigned by surveyed consumers to appearance, texture and nutrients content, the quality of final product obtained from different processing methods was equivalent. The 96% of total surveyed consumers preferred the fresh product, which means that there would be prejudging acts on objective estimation.