Assessing sensory properties of food using tribology and instrumentation

Develop food products with characteristics that meet consumers’ expectations

To be successful in an extremely competitive food market, your product has to offer the sensory experience the customer wants and expects, throughout its shelf life. To optimise your product composition and processing, you need quantitative data, as well as specific insight into what could be causing off flavours or odours, and whether your product’s texture or mouthfeel may degenerate over time.

Identify and eliminate ‘off-notes’

By combining results from our expert panels with data from technologies such as tribology and instrumentation, NIZO can help you quantify the characteristics of your product and how they can evolve throughout its shelf life. This may include contaminants that are impacting the consumer’s experience, by adding, for example, an off-flavour or unpleasant mouthfeel.

Using our multidisciplinary expertise in food manufacturing, formulation and processing, as well as microbiology and process modelling, we can interpret the results for you, and provide you with targeted and practical advice for preventative measures and chain control.

NIZO can:

• Carry out instrumental assessments of volatile and non-volatile sensory characteristics
• Carry out tribology tests and analytics
• Provide expert interpretation of the above results within an integrated assessment
• Deliver practical advice on optimising your product and processes