Novel techniques to understand consumer responses towards food products: A review with a focus on meat

Consumer evaluation has been used extensively over the past decades to evaluate acceptability and quality of food products. New methods have been developed to overcome some biases of traditional techniques. Testing with meat is challenging due to the high variability of the meat samples. This review outlines (a) the traditional consumer-based techniques for assessing food, and available methods to link consumer responses to sensory properties (b) qualitative measurements, (c) past and current methods for evaluating meat sensory characteristics and the development of the Meat Standard Australia (MSA) protocol, and (d) psychological and physiological factors affecting consumers. Conclusions from this review are: (1) Traditional consumer testing provides important information regarding acceptability but may miss important unconscious responses of consumers (2) Qualitative methods can obtain more holistic responses from consumers, (3) The Meat Standard Australia (MSA) protocol delivers consistent scores of meat's juiciness/tenderness/flavour and overall acceptability from consumers, and (4) Physiological responses may help to understand the unbiased emotions of consumers.