Organic and conventional nonflavored yogurts from the Italian market: Study on sensory profiles and consumer acceptability

BACKGROUND: The sensory properties of food products are an important success factor, especially in the organic market, where many producers and distributors of organic food claim superior taste for their products compared to the conventional alternative. For this reason consumer expectations and preferences, as well as the sensory properties of conventional and organic yogurt have to be investigated in-depth. In this work, the sensory profiling and consumer data of six nonflavored organic and conventional Italian yogurts, were elaborated. Some results on the data segmentation (heavy and light users of organic food) and on the effect of information on liking (blind and labelled test) were obtained. Multivariate analysis was carried out to study how the sensory characteristics of “natural yogurts” drive the consumer liking. RESULTS: Consumer’s preferences were oriented towards a creamy mouthfeel and smooth visual appearance and for a less acid and fresh taste. In particular, a conventional yogurt was the least accepted, because it was not creamy enough. This paper shows the room to improve unflavored yogurt to better meet consumer expectations. CONCLUSION: The sensory profiling did not allow a distinction in odour/taste/texture between organic and conventional samples also if three of four organic samples were in the region of the highest consumer acceptability, fitting well the consumer’s preference. There was not a clear tendency that heavy or light users scored differently in the blind and in the labelled tests regarding overall-liking but, for all, the most liked conventional yogurt scored higher when labelled as organic.