Published in the Elsevier journal Food Quality and Preference, the study was part of broader research to develop a new functional mayonnaise prepared with partial substitution of sunflower oil with walnut oil, which is rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
However, acceptance of the product was impacted more by the type of accompaniment served with the mayonnaise than by the health claim associated with it, report the researchers from the University of Naples in Italy.
“From a marketing point of view, it is crucial to know how important the health claim is for a choice of functional food and to find the appropriate way to give the health claim,” write the authors.
They added that a future goal for consumer-oriented product development is to place foods within the context of meals, as this may also have a significant affect on peoples’ liking of a product.
Claims or other foods?
As such, their study tested the impact of both a health claim and different food accompaniments when evaluating consumer response to the functional mayonnaise.
Via focus group interviews, the researchers chose the types of foods to accompany the mayonnaise, as well as the wording of the health claim.
Foods chosen were French fries and hamburgers, considered to be the two most widely used foods with mayonnaise, as well as boiled squid rings – a rarely used food.
The health claim chosen was: ‘‘This salad dressing is enriched with -3 fatty acids. These fatty acids contribute to keeping blood cholesterol levels constant”.
Just over 80 “young” consumers were chosen to participate in the consumer tests.
The first phase of consumer tests involved a questionnaire on participants’ food habits, followed by evaluations of three samples of mayonnaise with different contents of walnut oil and without any health claim information.
Participants were then divided into two groups for the second phase, and they evaluated the mayonnaise samples associated to the three different foods. The informed group tasted the samples accompanied by the health claim, the control group without any information.
No affect on liking scores
The reported findings reveal that acceptability of mayonnaise was increased with French fries and hamburgers, but decreased with boiled squid. In contrast, the health claim information was found to have no affect on the average consumer response to the mayonnaise.
“In general, the health claim failed to affect the liking scores, with few exceptions. This could be due to the fact that the chosen health claim was not effective for the subjects participating in the consumer tests, it being often difficult to choose the best wording,” wrote the researchers.
“This also seems to confirm the findings from the focus group interviews, which showed that mayonnaise is not seen as functional food since it is a fatty product, even if an effective health claim message could influence acceptability.”
Their results, they said, agree with previous studies that had found that health claims had no effect on acceptability of a functional chocolate (DiMonacoet al. (2005)) or corn chips (Tepper and Trail (1998)).
“Claims are best received when associated to products with a positive health image and health claim history (such as yoghurt and margarine) because of existing and intensive marketing activity in these areas,” states the current study.
However, the researchers pointed out that limitations to their study included the young age of all participants, since people of other ages may have different taste preferences or be affected differently by health claims.
A further limitation was that the chosen meal accompaniments were liked differently by participants at the outset, which may have impacted the acceptability of the combinations.
Source: Effect of meal accompaniments on the acceptability of a walnut oil-enriched mayonnaise with and without a health claim
Food Quality and Preference 21 (2010) 470–477
Authors: N.A. Miele et al.