Packaging Off-flavour Detection Ability of Two Food Simulants

Abstract

One of the many important tasks of packages that are intended for direct food contact is to preserve the flavour of the food properly. It is therefore important to measure to what extent the materials can evoke off-flavours in the packed foodstuff in terms of intensity, e.g. by use of numbers, and in terms of quality, e.g. by use of descriptors. Such intensity assessments introduce a need for calibration procedures. A procedure based on matching off-flavour intensities of real packaging materials to those of simplified calibration samples has been developed. Defining the concentrations of the calibration samples, based on simplified model systems corresponding to the actual intensity numbers, paves the way for a more uniform quantification. Keeping the complex reality in mind, such model system studies are useful for identifying critical points of the applied analytical methods. Furthermore, off-flavour interactions between packaging materials and different foodstuffs can be better understood. The sensory detection ability of one odorant, benzaldehyde, was higher when added to aqueous icing sugar (detection threshold 0.3 μg/g) than to coconut oil (5 μg/g). The assessors' individual sensitivity differed considerably, but their ability was clearly higher when judging the aqueous icing sugar. In contrast, coconut oil showed higher sorption capacity and retention of benzaldehyde than did the sugar, pointing out that a coconut oil-based calibration system is more stable than a sugar-based one. Real paperboard products induced off-flavour into coconut oil. The off-flavour intensities and qualities differed but were complex in relation to the calibration samples. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.