Non-Invasive Biometrics and Machine Learning Modeling to Obtain Sensory and Emotional Responses from Panelists during Entomophagy

Abstract

<jats:p>Insect-based food products offer a more sustainable and environmentally friendly source of protein compared to plant and animal proteins. Entomophagy is less familiar for Non-Asian cultural backgrounds and is associated with emotions such as disgust and anger, which is the basis of neophobia towards these products. Tradicional sensory evaluation may offer some insights about the liking, visual, aroma, and tasting appreciation, and purchase intention of insect-based food products. However, more robust methods are required to assess these complex interactions with the emotional and subconscious responses related to cultural background. This study focused on the sensory and biometric responses of consumers towards insect-based food snacks and machine learning modeling. Results showed higher liking and emotional responses for those samples containing insects as ingredients (not visible) and with no insects. A lower liking and negative emotional responses were related to samples showing the insects. Artificial neural network models to assess liking based on biometric responses showed high accuracy for different cultures (&gt;92%). A general model for all cultures with an 89% accuracy was also achieved.</jats:p>

Silicon supplementation improves the nutritional and sensory characteristics of lentil seeds obtained from drought‐stressed plants

“…The advantages of using both intensity and hedonic‐scale tests and biometric responses are to obtain the first reaction that consumers have when evaluating the product and how they change their responses once they process the information (thinking process or conscious response). Furthermore, some responses (conscious) are driven by cultural background and may not reflect actual hedonic or sensorial responses 17,18 …”

“…The integration of these techniques would be an efficient strategy to gather more information from consumers to correlate with sensory characteristics while tasting a product. Recently, this method was validated 24 and used successfully as a reliable tool to assess the acceptability of beer, 15,16,25 insect‐based snacks, 18 and chocolates by consumers 17,26 …”

“…Compared with previous studies, 15–18,24–27 the current study assessed whether the supplementation of Si would affect the sensory attributes of the seeds obtained from drought‐stressed lentil plants, taking into consideration the nutritional aspects of seeds as well. No previous research has investigated the emotional or the physiological responses of consumers associated with sensory evaluation of drought‐stressed seeds.…”

“…The sensory acceptability of these seeds was evaluated using both sensory attribute intensities and acceptance scores as well as non‐invasive biometric indices. Bio‐Sensory App was developed prior to this study to serve as a tool to obtain biometrics from sensory panellists assessing different food and beverage/packaging products as described in the Bio‐Sensory App papers 15–18,23–27,30 . Bio‐Sensory App was used in this study as a tool to evaluate several biometric measurements when compared with other methods.…”

“…Furthermore, some responses (conscious) are driven by cultural background and may not reflect actual hedonic or sensorial responses. 17,18 Biometrics measures physiological characteristics of individuals, which in turn aids in their automated recognition. Recently, biometric techniques have been widely used for personal authentication purposes, such as fingerprinting, face scanners, and voice recognition.…”