We validate the properties of new foods and ingredients in food matrices through laboratory testing:

• Functional and rheological properties
• Texture analysis
• Nutritional assessment
• Validation of the impact on health through trials on cellular, animal and human models using a group of expert collaborators set up for each product.
• Microwavable products and pre-cooked meals: AZTI-tecnalia’s research in the field of ‘easy foods’ focuses chiefly on microwavable products and the design of sterilised and refrigerated pre-cooked meals, with new cooking techniques to ensure the product has very similar sensorial and nutritional characteristics to home-made food.
• Scale testing: Through pre-industrial scale tests, it is possible to improve and create new processing lines and systems for product production. Trials and viability analyses are designed, processes and the quality of foods are optimised, and products are validated on a pre-industrial scale, with patentability potential.
• Eco-analysis
• Sensorial analysis

Sensorial analysis

Understanding the complex process that leads consumers to accept or reject a certain product or guarantee the successful launch of new products or services, as well as improving and optimising existing products or services, is often a challenge for companies in the food industry.

For this reason, AZTI-Tecnalia offers you fully customised services tailored to the needs of your company, acting as a liaison with Quality Control and R&D teams to translate consumer expectations and preferences into well-defined tangible properties.

Thanks to our broad database of consumer panels (children, adolescents, adults, OAPs, home makers, consumers with specific nutritional requirements…) and panels of expert tasting judges for a wide variety of foods, our in-house technicians and analysts can ascertain consumer tastes in our sensorial laboratory.

Furthermore, AZTI-Tecnalia provides technical assistance to train sensory analysis panels in companies.

Wide range of studies

Sensorial analysis provides useful information for the resolution of a wide range of studies.

• Development of new products: we help to characterise their sensorial profile, to predict the level of consumer acceptance before their commercial launch.
  
• Optimisation of formulations: to know whether the consumer is capable of noting the substitution of ingredients if they add value.
  
• Specifications and quality control: to judge product typicality.
  
• Shelf-life studies: real-time and accelerated studies of sterilised products, to monitor and predict changes that take place in a product during storage.
  
• Investigation of anomalous flavours/smells in the product.
  
• Comparison with rival products: are consumers capable of telling our product apart from others? Do they prefer it to that of the competition? Why?
  
• Sensorial acceptability and preference studies.
• Definition of sensorial profile: to establish the typicality of new foods.

Comparte este contenido: