My name is Vanessa Mello Rodrigues, and I am a Brazilian Registered Nutritionist. Currently I am a Marie-Curie Post-doctoral research fellow within the Foodservice and Applied Nutrition Research Group and working for one year on the project VeggiEAT, coordinated by Prof. Heather Hartwell.
VeggiEAT is a 4 year EU funded project among four countries (Denmark, France, Italy and United Kingdom) encouraging a more sustainable diet based on vegetables. One of my first jobs was performing a sensory test with 56 first year Hospitality students evaluating the difference in preference between frozen and canned vegetables. A frozen and canned sample for both peas and sweet corn were presented to the participants, and they were asked to taste them and indicate how much they liked them on a 9 point Likert scale (ranging from 1 ‘I do not like it all’ and 9 ‘I like it a lot’). We also asked for open ended comments.
The analysis showed that for peas, the frozen sample was greatly more liked than the canned one, average scoring 6.0 and 2.6 points, respectively. This was mainly attributed to the more ‘vibrant colour’ and ‘firmness’ of the frozen variety, whilst the canned peas were considered ‘mushy’ and with a ‘not pleasant appearance’. The opposite was observed for sweetcorn, although both were liked, the difference between the samples was 1.6 score points on average (6.7 canned; 4.9 frozen). The main positive characteristics highlighted for the canned variety were the ‘thickness’ and ‘greater size’ of the sweetcorn.
These results are going to be further statistically evaluated and described in detail and published as a swift communication. We also aim to disseminate to industry as canned and frozen vegetables offer virtually the same nutrition as fresh, with the advantage of facilitating accessibility, storage and food safety disparities.