Current status and future prospects of sensory and consumer research approaches to gluten-free bakery and pasta products

Abstract

Sensory and consumer research performs a pivotal role in gluten-free (GF) food research and development due to consumer dissatisfaction about currently available products, despite the continued growth of this market and promising research developments. Nowadays, almost half of the original articles about GF products include sensory analysis. A current overview is needed to help both food scientists and industry indentify current trends and forward-looking approaches. This current review has gathered information concerning sensory and consumer research for GF bakery and pasta products, from studies published in the last decade, and then discusses future challenges in the light of recent advances. Among the promising approaches, projective techniques that collect data using social media can provide quick, spontaneous and direct opinions from GF consumers. They can also be used to evaluate trends and cross-cultural or global insights. Participatory methods have highlighted the importance of label information and may further explore the behavior of GF consumers in more realistic environments, as well as to evaluate the intrinsic GF food factors in GF consumer opinions, emotions, behavior and choices. This review details current issues occurring in sensory analysis of GF products, which still need to be resolved. The combination of affective and analytical methods allows for a better characterization of the samples and such sensory analysis of GF products in the future could guide product development and quality control, overcoming technological, nutritional, and shelf-life issues.

Keywords: Consumers; Gluten-free; Sensory evaluation; Sensory properties.