FOOD PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Featured Product: Fruit Pizza

Production Designers: Natasha Paz, Pauline Huang and Kayla Schmitz

WHAT IS THE FPD PROJECT??

We worked as a team to invent, develop, modify and evaluate a food product based on scientific methods, evaluations, and a variety of procedures. The product that our team developed had to meet two criteria. It had to meet one nutrition claim defined by the FDA and meet at least one current consumer trend. In eight weeks we made adjustments to our first recipe and tested different variables and how they were perceived. Each week we did an evaluation with a partnering group and got feedback about what worked and what didn't work for our product. At the end of the time frame we finalized our product and did a comparison taste test to rate our first product and our finished product to see if the changes we made were for the better. We used different statistical analysis and different tools of measurement to rate our product.

HEALTH CLAIM AND TREND

Nutrient Health Claim: Low fat

(low: means a product could be eaten frequently without exceeding the RDAs for total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, or fat calories.) FDA constitutes Low fat as: 3g or less fat per serving Main dish/meal product: 3g or less fat per 100 grams, and not more than 30% of calories from fat

Consumer Trend: Indulgent desserts.

Sheet cakes, premium ice cream and big cookies also garnered interest, suppliers said. They also noted a dessert dichotomy, with both the richest desserts available and better-for-you options such as multigrain, low-sugar cookies catching operators eyes. From: Top food trends from the 2012 NRA Show

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

Eating desert shouldnt be something you feel bad about, it should be a delicious treat that tastes good, and makes you feel good at the same time. That is why were introducing a convenient, delicious, and healthy dessert that you wont be able to resist. The fruit pizza is an innovative creation that is low in fat and high in vitamins and minerals. With this delectable treat, you can start to make healthier decisions throughout your day- everyday! The fruit pizza can be a morning treat, a mid-day snack, or a not so guilty pleasure after a long day and will leave you satisfied with the gratifying and delectable treat you are craving.

WEEK 1: GOLDEN STANDARD

Traditional Fruit Pizza Recipe: Topping: Fresh cut fruit: Strawberries, bananas, blueberries, kiwi, canned mandarin oranges Filling: Cream cheese frosting Crust: Store bought Sugar Cookie- Pillsbury
What we want to change: To meet our health claim we want to improve this traditional dessert by altering the crust and the filling to reduce the fat and sugar content. We will do this by trying various alterations to the ingredients and measure using different measuring devices.

Problems: Choosing a recipe and deciding what we want our product will be for the next eight weeks!

WEEK 2: DIFFERENT COOKIE CRUST

Topping: same assortment of fruit Filling: Same cream cheese frosting. Crust: Oatmeal cookie
What we want to change: We wanted to change the cookie to have more nutritional value to it so we replaced the sugar cookie with an oatmeal cookie to make a product that is low in Saturated Fat, and very low in Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of fiber but wont take away the sweet factor and will still make the pizza consistent Problems: We made WAY too much of the cookie, so had a lot leftover, we had to re-evaluate the recipe and cut it in half.

WEEK 3: CHANGE THE FRUIT

Toppings: Frozen Fruit (Mixed berries, mangoes, peaches) Dried fruit (Mangoes, cantaloupe, craisons, raisons, apples, apricots) Filling: cream cheese filling Crust: Oatmeal cookie (reduce 1/2 amount of sugar) (replace flour with whole wheat flower)

What we want to change: We decided to change the fruit to dried and frozen fruits. This way we could see if the fruit pizza would still be enjoyable packaged frozen or dried on the shelf. We also wanted to see if there was a difference or preference for a certain kind of fruit. We decided to choose two different types and do a preference test between them.

WEEK 4: CHANGE THE FILLING AND REPLACED SOME OF THE FRUIT

Toppings: kiwi, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, peaches Filling: Vanilla Yogurt (plain with added vanilla, and cup powdered sugar) Crust: Oatmeal cookie recipe
What we want to change: We wanted to take out the Philadelphia cream cheese and replace it with a healthier option to reduce the fat. We brainstormed what would be healthiest and still taste good and came up with a Greek Yogurt filling.
Challenges or Problems: Oatmeal cookie was less hard and didnt hold as well as previous weeks. We may have halved the recipe wrong.

WEEK 5: VEGAN OPTION

Toppings: Same as week four Filling: Vegan (1 cup cashews soaked, 1 lemons, cup agave nectar, teaspoon vanilla essence.) Crust: Vegan oatmeal cookie. Sub banana and apple sauce for eggs and butter.
Challenges or Problems: Crust was fluffier and a weird texture for the fruit pizza. The crust also had a banana aftertaste to it that might limit our target market because those who dont like banana flavoring may not be interested in the product. What we want to change: We wanted to further make the filling and crust healthier. We decided to make a vegan filling made from nuts, lemon, and agave nectar and a vegan oatmeal cookie crust.

WEEK 6: FINALIZING THE PRODUCT

We planned on going back to the oatmeal crust, but using a sugar free recipe to reduce the sugar and fat content of our product to reach our health claim. We did another preference test between the vegan filling and the yogurt filling to decide which is best and keep our product low in fat.

TESTING

We used the penetrometer instrument to test how tough the cookie crust was, and to measure the tenderness of it.

We used the line spread test to test the viscosity of our cookie batter after it was prepared.

CONSUMER TESTING

The day of consumer testing we tested the original recipe of week one with the finalized recipe of week 6.

PROCEDURES OF CONSUMER TESTING

Sample size: 40 different subjects

Consumer characteristics : Randomly chosen/ ages vary ~18-25/ meet
target audience.

Procedures: Assign two random numbers to both the original fruit pizza and
our healthy fruit pizza (in our case 625 and 539) and make 40 numbered plates with a section for both samples.

Analysis: We created a descriptive nine point scale for the testing scoresheet
with different categories to test. We chose appearance, aroma, flavor, aftertaste, overall liking.

Our nine-point hedonic scale!!

ANALYSIS OF DATA
Statistics Original Original Original Original Original Appearance Aroma Flavor aftertaste Overall liking Valid Missing Mean Median Std. Deviation 40 23 7.70 8.00 1.203 40 23 7.63 8.00 1.295 40 23 8.23 9.00 1.025 40 23 8.25 8.00 .927 40 23 8.20 8.50 .966

New New Appearance Aroma 40 23 7.73 8.00 1.219 40 23 7.78 8.00 1.250

New Flavor 40 23 8.00 8.00 1.198

New New Liking Overall Liking 40 23 7.83 8.00 1.152 40 23 8.05 8.00 1.011

We didnt expect our individual pieces to be so tiny so the appearance didnt do the sample pieces justice to how the overall project looked. This could have had an affect on how the appearance was graded.

The aroma was rated higher on the improved product and the comments claimed they enjoyed the oatmeal aroma and less of the banana aroma of the original which was overpowering (which we hypothesized in the beginning). NOTE: The banana was also mentioned as being very overpowering in the aftertaste category as well!
The average of the flavor was higher for our pizza than for the original sugar cookie.

Paired Samples Statistics Mean

Appearance Aroma Flavor Aftertaste Overall liking

N 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40

Original Improved Original Improved Original Improved Original Improved Original Improved

7.70 7.73 7.63 7.78 8.23 8.00 8.25 7.83 8.20 8.05

Std. Std. Error Deviation Mean 1.203 .190 1.219 .193 1.295 .205 1.250 .198 1.025 .162 1.198 .189 .927 .147 1.152 .182 .966 .153 1.011 .160

Standard deviation

Correlation and significant difference

Appearance Aroma Flavor Aftertaste

Paired Samples Correlations N Original and improved Original and improved Original and improved Original and improved 40 40 40 40 40 Correlation .484 .786 .167 .234 .199 Sig. .002 .000 .303 .146 .217

Overall liking Original and improved

PROBLEMS AND ISSUES As much as we tried to get our healthy fruit pizza to meet our health claim of low fat, our nutrition facts revealed that it in fact didnt meet the criteria to be in this category, even though we cut the sugar and changed the filling many times, further changes needed to be made to qualify

We wanted to have bigger sample sizes for the consumer testing, but didnt make enough of our product to capture the essence of it. Next time we should double on both the pizzas to depict an actual sample size of our product and to achieve better results