DESCRIPTIVE PROFILE OF PEACH NECTAR SWEETENED WITH SUCROSE AND DIFFERENT SWEETENERS

ABSTRACT Consumers are looking even more for food with pleasant characteristics in terms of flavor, appearance, aroma and texture. Thanks to technological advances, it is possible to find low‐calorie products with these characteristics, with competitive prices when compared with similar products containing sucrose. In this study, peach nectar samples containing sucrose and the sweeteners aspartame, cyclamate/saccharin 2:1 blend, stevia, sucralose and acesulfame‐K, were evaluated by Descriptive Quantitative Analysis. This methodology is the most complete and sophisticated technique for the sensory characterization of a product, because it allows a complete description of all the attributes existent in such product. Eleven consumers were selected by their discriminative capacity, repeatability of judgment and agreement with the sensory team. Sucrose sample were at ideal sweetness and the sweeteners samples were at equi‐sweet concentrations. The descriptive terms were yellow color (YCL), cloudy aspect (CLD), brightness (BRI), visual viscosity (VIS), peach aroma (PAR), sweet aroma (SAR), herb aroma (HAR), peach flavor (PFL), sweetness (SWE), bitterness (BIT), herb flavor (HFL), sourness (SOU), residual bitterness (RBT), residual sweetness (RSW), astringency (AST) and body (BOD). The results were evaluated by analysis of variance, Tukey's test and Principal Component Analysis. The results show that the samples did not have statistical difference (P ≤ 0.05) in the attributes YCL, CLD and BRI. The sample sweetened with sucrose presented higher grades in the attributes VIS, PAR, PFL, SWE and BOD, differing statistically (P ≤ 0.05) from the other samples. Samples containing Stevia received high grades in unpleasant attributes, such as HAR, HFL, BIT, RBT and RSW, which would certainly influence its acceptance in consumers' tests. Acesulfame‐K also presented high grades in the attributes BIT and RBT. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Quantitative Descriptive Analysis is one of the most sophisticated methods to characterize sensory attributes of products, providing a complete description of important sensory properties. With this technique, it is possible to study qualitative and quantitative aspects of the products. This methodology is used when launching a new product; in quality control applications; to track sensory changes in a product over time; to correlate instrumental, chemical or physical with sensory measurements, among others. In this research, several lexicons were generated to describe the peach nectar sweetened with different sweeteners, highlighting some characteristics of sweeteners such as bitterness and residual tastes. It also presents a comparison among the nectar sweetened with sucrose and sweeteners and shows which sweetener has a descriptive profile more similar to sucrose. With this information, people suffering from diabetes or obesity, major problems in the whole world, could find a sugar substitute with similar properties of sucrose.