Food Product Design: Focus On Sensory - January 2001 - Developing Products for Children: A Sensory Approach

January 2001

By Nancy C. Rodriguez
Contributing Editor

School’s out, and the grazing is easy. The burgeoning category of kid-friendly foods features unlikely products such as TABASCO™-flavored Jelly Bellies™, super-sour chips, and jalapeño pepper poppers dipped in green ketchup, and washed down with neon-colored soda. Younger students and their preschool siblings opt for more familiar flavors in innovative play-with-your-food combo-packs.

Jean McDonnell, market research moderator, JMD Research and Consulting, Chicago, worked on Mc Donald’s Happy Meals® from 1982 to 1983. Happy Meal was an industry innovation. But, times have changed. More than half of women with school-age children now work outside the home. These moms, who once controlled what foods came into the household, are now allowing their children to make more of the mealtime decisions.

"Moms feel guilty about being away, and give in to what their children want," McDonnell observes. "They also tend to be more forgiving than stay-at-home moms when it comes to nutrition." Then, there is the convenience factor, which is not limited to families with parents who work away from home. In marketing-speak, this scenario spells o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y.

Market focus for food manufacturers has shifted from parents to children. A sensory-based approach to designing food products for children has a four-fold value:

• It uncovers the basic nature of children’s taste preferences.
  
• It provides parameters that will guide prototype development.
  
• It offers descriptors to measure and analyze responses.
  
• It increases the chance of marketplace success.
  

Speaking in tongues
The sensory development of children begins in the seventh week of pregnancy, when taste buds form on fetal tongues. Swallowing the sweet-tasting amniotic fluid, the fetus develops a sweet liking. Numerous studies have documented that sweet-tasting substances, including breast milk, are pleasurable to newborns. The preference for sweets continues throughout childhood. The practice of giving something sweet to comfort a child is well-founded — a sweet substance triggers the release of opiate-like substances that reduce body pain.

Humans begin life with about 10,000 taste buds that act as receptors to the four primary senses — sweet, salt, sour and bitter. Taste buds are located in the throat and esophagus and on the tongue’s papillae, the bumps that can be seen with the naked eye. There are three types of papillae: fungiform, foliate and vallate. Each contains nerve-wired receptor cells that are sensitive to the chemicals in food.

According to Linda Bartoshuk, Ph.D., a professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, the number of fungiform is the primary determinant of taste sensitivity. She mapped young "nontasters" at 11 taste buds per sq. cm and "supertasters" of the same age at 1,100 taste buds per sq. cm. One-third of the population are genetically-conditioned supertasters who are identified by their sensitivity to potassium chloride and saccharin, which they taste as bitter. To a supertaster, sugar is sweeter and chilies more burning than for nontasters.

Bartoshuk and University of Connecticut-Storrs researcher, Valerie Duffy, Ph.D., discovered that more than two-thirds of supertasters are female. While there are no scientific studies of children, Bryan Urbick, a London-based market researcher, Consumer Knowledge Center (CKC), who works with children in many countries, projects that four out of five girls are "picky eaters" (youthful supertasters, we suggest). He reports that some young tasters who are apparently more sensitive than others, complain that a salty taste "hurts," that dark chocolate is bitter, and that sugar is "sickly" (too heavy).

Nutrition expert Richard Mattes, Ph.D., at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, believes that taster status, compared to cultural, economic and other factors, doesn’t greatly impact what we eat. This may be true for adults who will season a food, such as salad greens, with dressing to hide its bitterness. The impact of taster status on children is unknown, but does potentially impact sensory test design and implementation, interpretation and application of findings.

Sensory influences
Though a newborn can detect its mother by smell, the olfactory senses linked to food do not develop fully until a child is 4 or 5 years old. It is the bright red color and sweetness of cherry-flavored foods, not the distinctive smell, that attracts toddlers. Especially during the early years, when a child’s senses are immature, the shape, color and texture of food play a major role.

Texture. Younger children prefer foods that are smooth, with no "bits" or particulates — no granola mix; chunky fruit spread or peanut butter; pulp in the orange juice; or vegetable toppings on pizza. Young children also like soft foods: soft cake; soft macaroni and cheese or canned spaghetti; and soft cookies. This texture can also deliver artificial flavors. Banana flavor, for instance, is best carried in a soft, moist medium. It is not until ages 10 to 12 that children develop a liking for crunchy and chewy foods with more complex textures.

Color. Urbick reports that purple, red and blue are kid favorites. "They do not like brown," he explains. "When kids draw cola, 70% make it in one of two colors, red and blue." H.J. Heinz Co., Pittsburgh, has been very successful with its "blastin’ green" and traditional red ketchups because they appeal to children’s imagination, allowing them to make colorful dots and swirls on mashed potatoes and corn. The green color was selected after extensive testing with both children and parents. "It has more kitchen logic than other colors because we eat green foods," explains Heinz spokesperson Deb Magness.

Shape. We’ve become accustomed to cereal, pasta, crackers, cheese, and even chicken nuggets in shapes ranging from dinosaurs to stars. Mini-anything seems to have value-added appeal for kids.

Packaging. The EZ Squirt™ bottle is the real story of the green ketchup. Based on observations of children pouring ketchup, Heinz designed an ergonomic container of soft plastic that is easy to grasp with two hands and tip forward. The narrow tip allows children to control the flow — a very important attribute to children.

Oscar Mayer Lunchables™ are an amazing example of the power of packaging. The package’s designers took a child’s aversion to foods touching one another seriously, and like the green ketchup, the product is also fun. Best of all, children get to control what and how they eat the contents. The same fun factor applies to Yoplait’s Go-Gurt™, portable yogurt tubes that a child squeezes right into the mouth.

Temperature. Adults cannot fathom the kid-friendly lunch kit feature of cold pizza sauce on a cracker or cold mini-hot dogs on cold buns. Equally strange to adults are preschoolers who prefer ready-to-eat waffles right out of the freezer. McDonnell’s explanation is that the flavor system drives the preferences of young children who haven’t yet developed a point of view about temperature.

Kids should be seen and heard
"Doing research with children is an even newer idea than selling things to them," says Tom McGee, Doyle Research Associates, Chicago. "Today, products and services aimed at children are rarely launched without some idea of how they’ll play to their prospective targets."

Ideation. "It’s getting more and more difficult to come up with food products that are truly innovative. There are only so many ways to make jelly," says Ellen Daw, manager of sensory services at J.M. Smucker Co., Orville, OH.

It’s just such a situation that has stimulated growth of market firms like Kideation®, Doyle Research Associates, Inc., Chicago, and CKC’s Kidslink Research Limited™, that tap children’s creativity.

Heinz brought in Doyle’s Kideation team to help expand stagnant ketchup sales. A carefully selected group of fourth to sixth graders devoted half the session to evaluating ideas already in the Heinz pipeline. The rest of the time, which was spent brainstorming new ideas, generated the concepts of colored ketchup and a kid-friendly bottle. Heinz took the ideas and ran with them, developing a product that successfully debuted in October 2000.

McDonnell, who moderates ideation sessions, finds that children are best at generating basic ideas, but not at taking the next step. They are too literal and also have problems with applying an idea to a different setting, she believes. The value is discovering the core triggers, giving that information to a new product group to ideate around, and then going back to the kids with concepts.

Quantitative research. "One thing for sure, kids really know what they like and dislike," says Dana Craig-Petsinger, director of sensory science for Kellogg’s, Battle Creek, MI, who has collaborated with Urbick. "And they are very knowledgeable," Urbick adds, pointing out that children as young as eight years master the complex cast of 13 characters in the popular Harry Potter books, and the multiple descriptors of over a hundred different Pokémon™ characters. Urbick’s faith in the capacity of 8-year-old children to master complex systems stems from his success in teaching sensory skills to children in classrooms.

Qualitative research. While moderators may work with mixed groups of boys and girls in classrooms, where they are used to being together, most separate them for qualitative studies. "Boys will be boys and girls will be either," McGee says. For instance, girls may be equally, or even more adventuresome about intense or spicy flavors than boys, but boys will seldom express a preference for a "delicate" product. Girls tend to mature earlier than boys, but most boys are more confident of their own opinions than girls. In recent mixed sessions, however, McDonnell finds that 8- to 10-year-old girls are very confident.

In focus groups, McDonnell uses questions that cannot be answered simply "yes" or "no," such as: "What are the two best and two worst things about this?" or "What would you tell your friend about this?" In trying to discover what motivates choices, she uses games and activities. She listens and observes, then sits on the findings for a day or two, perhaps reviewing the tapes until patterns emerge.

Doyle Research Associates offers telephone focus groups as a cost-effective and time-efficient way to survey older children and teens. On-line focus groups also offer anonymity. "Kids are more willing to disagree with someone else when they aren’t looking at that person in the face. The insecurities they have about their appearance and manner are also minimized," McGee adds.

One-on-one interviews are most effective with children age 5 to 8, who do not benefit from a shared experience. Preschoolers and infant research is best done in the home, and includes the mother.

Sensory tasting. At relatively young ages, children in this country are exposed to a wide variety of foods. Nevertheless, children under age 8 prefer familiar, somewhat bland flavors, and expand their liking for more exciting flavors as they grow older. Children age 8 to 12 really know sweet and sour, McDonnell finds, but they cannot identify herbs and spices. They also have less consistent responses to salt than adults — some love it, some don’t. (But they all love chips and fries.) Vocabulary is the biggest hurtle in conducting focused sensory testing with children.

Quaker Oats Company, Chicago, has taken a major step in sensory research on children’s prototypes. Testing is conducted in 14 booths, each with an automated entry-data system that was adapted from a shell that was used to register flaws in an automotive assembly line. The equipment includes a screen with an intuitive touch pen that is designed to simulate paper and pencil. "Even non-English-speaking individuals and children as young as 8 years find the system easy to use," says Dennis Passe, Ph.D., senior principal scientist/senior manager, Quaker Oats Company. "With the booths, we have the ability to control the situation. The information we capture is highly focused and useful."

Quaker uses an outside sensory research supplier to recruit children and execute the studies with children, ages 8 to 12. Younger children receive almost one-on-one support, and use a simplified five-point hedonic scale to determine how much a child likes a product. A nine-point scale works well with children 8 and older. In most cases, there is interaction between the children and the staff to clarify the questions. While test administrators carefully monitor fatigue factors, they find that children like using the computer.

Getting it (ethically) right
As marketing to children grows, there’s concern about the responsibilities of researchers. Ellen Daw heads a taskforce for the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), Philadelphia, that is writing guidelines that include safety, legal permission, screening, testing methods, respect for social and emotional well-being, staff training, and advocacy of children to clients.

"Ten or 12 years ago, researchers figured that as long as a child wasn’t ingesting something, there was no harm in asking them to respond to visual tests without parental consent," says Daw. Parents have come to believe that this is taking advantage of their children. They want assurance that children aren’t being pressured or presented with inappropriate information. "We hope that the (ASTM) guidelines will be enough to raise awareness about what makes research with children different from research with adults," she says.

Child nutrition consultant Connie Evers, M.S., R.D., publisher of "Feeding Kids," an online newsletter for parents and teachers (www.nutritionforkids.com), is concerned that in distinguishing "kid" foods from "adult" foods, we may be making assumptions about what children will eat. Is it not possible that children can lead the way in encouraging food product manufacturers to develop creative, great-tasting, fun-to-eat foods for all ages?

Nancy C. Rodriguez is a sensory specialist and president of Food Marketing Support Services, Inc., (www.fmssinc.com), Oak Park, IL, a contract food product design firm. Anne Hunt, FMSS writer-in-residence, contributed to this article.

Back to top

3400 Dundee Rd. Suite #100
Northbrook, IL 60062
Phone: 847-559-0385
Fax: 847-559-0389
E-Mail: info@foodproductdesign.com
Website: www.foodproductdesign.com