The visual measurement of the degree of clumping of dairy powders using photo standards

Abstract

The appearance of a food product is one of the first things that impacts a consumer's opinion of overall quality; food manufacturers therefore seek to ensure their product is ideal and the same at each time of production. Instrumental tests are commonly conducted to understand physical properties of food products but are often too granular to truly understand what the consumer is experiencing. For example, if a milk powder looks atypical to a consumer, then the consumer tends to assume that the functionality and sensory aspects of the powder will be substandard. A method was needed in the commercial grading environment to measure and monitor the tendency of dairy powders to clump (clumpiness), which is the key visual aspect defining milk powders. This paper describes the development and validation of a set of photographic standards of the degree of clumpiness to be used by trained grading assessors.