MANUFACTURERS URGED TO USE SENSES IN FOOD DESCRIPTIONS Consumers will choose smaller portions of chocolate cake when they are asked to vividly imagine the multi-sensory pleasure…taste, smell and texture…of similar desserts, new international research has found. www.foodtechnology.co.nz 35 Homegrown president Kirk Homenick says. “Delivering unrivalled product quality is therefore a top priority for us, and we’ve seen a vast improvement in seasoning consistency as a result of installation – most notably, we’ve been able to reduce our seasoning application rate from 8-9% down to 5-6%.” The positioning of the scarfplate on the infeed - positioned closer to the top of the tumbling product - adds dry powder into the flavouring area more accurately, providing high quality, consistent seasoning. In addition, the scallop-designed infeed conveyor curves to match the shape of the drum, which reduces product drop, helps control product direction and results in reduced product waste. With the Hardbite Chips range including eight different flavour profiles, Naturally Homegrown required a seasoning system that offers rapid cleaning time for flavour changes and minimum downtime. “As a small plant that is experiencing growing demand, it’s imperative that seasoning changeovers and cleaning downtime is kept to a minimum to ensure optimum production levels,” Homenick says. “Since the installation, changeover times have been reduced by 15-20%. Now we are able to carry out a seasoning changeover in less than 20 minutes, thanks to the system’s simple design.” Rapidly changing consumer demands have increased pressure on snack manufacturers to run a variety of capacities, package sizes and materials within their plant, tna’s regional sales manager Teri Johnson says. “To increase their product portfolio at minimum cost, food manufacturers are increasingly looking for more flexibility in their existing production lines to customise their offerings and respond to shifts in consumer demand and preferences. Manufacturers adding new flavours to their product range, for example, will require a system that allows for quick product and flavour change, and outputs to be adjusted according to demand.” Homenick says the entire installation was completed quickly and on target to prevent interrupting production during a time of high demand. “Once in place, the system basically behaved as a plug- in-and-play,” he says. “The seasoning system has delivered on our key objectives of improving overall consistency and seasoning application. It has equally supported our growth and helped us achieve increased household penetration of the Hardbite brand, by allowing us to produce a highly consistent product.” Portion sizes have gone hand in hand with rising rates of obesity, and to curb supersizing, governments and public health institutions have advocated portion size limits and health warnings. But they have had limited success, with consumers feeling they are being infantilised and food marketers feeling they’re being squeezed as they typically extract higher profits from bigger portions. However, L’Oréal Chaired Professor of Marketing, Innovation and Creativity at INSEAD Pierre Chandon and Assistant Professor of the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia Yann Cornil have found people can be encouraged to choose smaller, healthier portions, without compromising on enjoyment. And they say this research could help food manufacturers design packaging and labelling that uses the senses of consumers to increase satisfaction and up profits. In their Journal of Marketing Research article, the pair say when it comes to eating, pleasure is inversely related to size and at its maximum in the first few bites of the food. Each additional bite then becomes less enjoyable, and it is the last bite which determines the overall impression of how much the consumer has enjoyed the food. When people choose portions based on value for money or the fear of being hungry, they end up choosing one of today’s supersized portions which are just not that enjoyable to eat toward the end. Unlike health warnings, this multi-sensory imagery does not reduce expected eating enjoyment or willingness to pay for the food. In fact, “focusing on the pleasure of eating, rather than value for money, health, or hunger, makes people happier to pay more for less food,” Chandon says. The pair conducted five different experiments using different groups such as French schoolchildren, adult Americans and young Parisian women. In the first study, 42 school children were asked to imagine – incorporating their five senses – the pleasure of eating familiar desserts and were then asked to choose portions of brownies. They naturally chose portions of brownies that were two sizes smaller than the portions chosen by children in a control condition. Another experiment imitated high end restaurants by describing a regular chocolate cake as smelling of ‘roasted coffee’ with ‘aromas of honey and vanilla’ with an ‘aftertaste of blackberry’. This vivid description made 190 adult Americans choose a smaller portion compared to a control condition where the cake was simply described as ‘chocolate cake’. The study also had a third condition, in which people were told about the calorie and fat content of each cake portion. This nutrition information also led people to choose a smaller portion, but at a cost…it reduced the amount that people were willing to pay for the cake by about $1 compared to the multi-sensory condition. A third study showed that people underestimated how much they will enjoy eating small portions of chocolate brownies, expecting to enjoy small portions less than larger ones, when actually both were enjoyed equally. This mistake was eliminated by multi-sensory imagery, which made people better forecasters of their own future eating enjoyment. “Having more descriptive menus or product labels that encourage customers to use their senses can lead to positive outcomes for consumer satisfaction and health, but also for profits,” says Cornil. “This could make for a more sustainable food industry, which struggles to grow in the face of today’s obesity epidemic.” The study was based on Cornil’s PhD dissertation which was conducted at INSEAD under the mentorship of Chandon, who is also the director of the INSEAD Dorbonne University Behavioural Lab.
FT-Nov16
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