Optimising acceptability of low-sugar strawberry gels segmenting consumersby internal preference mapping

Optimisation of the acceptability of a low-sugar strawberry gel using diffe rent levels of. strawberry pulp (200-900 g kg(-1)) and of mixed kappa-carra geenan-locust bean gums (1:1)(5.0-11.0 g kg(-1)) have been performed based on response surface methodology. A group of 91 consumers evaluated the acce ptability of each one of the 16 formulations. Information obtained when con sidering the mean acceptance scores for all consumers as a dependent variab le in regression analysis was compared with that obtained when using the me an acceptance scores for each of the consumer subgroups, segmented accordin g to their similarity of preference by internal preference mapping. Only th e linear effect of fruit was significant on the mean acceptance scores for all consumers. The three first segmented subgroups accounted for about 70% of the total consumers. The rest of consumers were randomly distributed and could not be grouped. While for subgroups 1 and 3 the composition factors considered did not show a clear influence on acceptability, for subgroup 2 variance in acceptability was very well explained in terms of fruit and hyd rocolloid contents (R-2 = 0.94). (C) 1999 Society of Chemical Industry.