Assessing nutritional intake of Sensory Panellists during sensory evaluation sessions

Abstract

Food manufacturers often employ highly trained Sensory Panellists to conduct sensory evaluations, such as profiling, discrimination and rating testing to understand the impact of any reformulation/process/pack changes and new product launches on consumer experiences. At Marlow Foods, 8-12 Panellists work four days/wk evaluating meat, mycoprotein, and plant-based alternatives for up to four hours/day, between 09:00 and 13:00. As part of Marlow Foods commitment to supporting the wellbeing of all employees, the energy, macronutrients and sodium consumed during evaluation sessions need to be considered within the context of habitual (threedaily) meal patterns. Consequently, these daily tasting sessions should be regarded as an interlude between meals, or as a 'snack period’. The UK government’s recommended calorie guidelines, assuming an energy intake of 2000kcal and weight maintenance, suggests 400kcal for snacks and beverages.⁽¹⁾ This project aimed to determine the Panellists nutritional intake during these evaluation sessions, to compare against energy and nutrient recommendations, and to monitor consumption of nutrients of public health concern (e.g, salt and saturated fat).⁽²⁾

To assess average dietary intake during evaluation sessions, details of the foods consumed by the 11 panellists (7 female, 4 male, mean age 51yrs, range 41-63yrs) were collected over 5-weeks. Average daily intakes for energy, total fat, saturated fat, sugar, fibre and salt were calculated from declared back of pack nutrition information and theoretical nutritional values for products in development using FoodChain ID.^[3]

Over the 5-week period, the Panellist average daily intake (range,± SDs, % of reference intake (RI)) during evaluation sessions were 192kcal energy (93-292,± 85, 9.6%), 7.3g total fat (2.7-14.5,± 4.5, 10.4%), 1.1g saturated fat (0.6-2.2,± 0.6, 5.7%), 1.5g sugar (0.4-2.3,± 0.9, 1.7%), 7.1g fibre (4.0-12.6,± 4.0, 23.6%) and 1.0g salt (0.4-1.9,± 0.6, 16.6%).

The average daily energy intakes recorded during the tasting period comfortably fell within the UK government’s recommended allowance for snacks, thereby supporting the notion that Panellists can maintain a healthy, balanced diet whilst consuming this category of food. However, salt intakes in Panellists averaged 16.6% of the RI, reflective of the added salt content in many meat and meat alternative products. This signals the need for a panel nutrition policy, establishing specific nutritional guidelines to ensure responsible balance of projects and thus consumption of nutrients of public health concern (e.g., salt and saturated fat) during evaluation sessions. As next steps, Marlow Foods is developing such a policy and guidelines, to ensure the wellbeing of Panellists while maintaining delivery of robust sensory evaluations.