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Remember those commercials from the ‘80’s where everyone was blindfolded while trying two different types of cola to determine a winner? Blind taste-tests were all the rage as the beverage industry reached its peak and commercialization hit full swing. Manufacturers were throwing millions of dollars into packaging and marketing ploys to persuade consumers to choose their product. Although brand name packaging has been shown to impact consumer preference, new studies reveal that there is even a greater influence from the ways actual beverage color affects taste perception.

More than packaging and name brand recognition, beverage color alone has the most significant influence over consumer taste perception and choice. Image Source: Flickr’ user Tom Hilton

New taste tests have compared results between brand name labeling and beverage color to determine that the visual look of beverages is the dominating factor in taste perception. JoAndrea Hoegg of the University of British Columbia reported to FoodNavigator-USA.com that, “perceptual discrimination is fundamental to the rational choice in many product categories yet rarely examined in consumer research”. She also stated that study results proved that “two items that tasted the same but were different color were perceived as more distinct in taste than two items that actually tasted different but were the same color”1. With such conclusive evidence on the influence of color over consumer choice, industry leaders are now looking for ways to increase the marketability of their products by utilizing color measurement instrumentation.

Rum ranges dramatically in color, clarity, and flavor, from clear as water and virtually tasteless to deep brown and rich in complex flavors. In fact, you can often tell a great deal about the flavor profile and quality of rum simply by looking at the color and clarity of the liquid inside of the bottle. This is why most rum producers distill, filter, and age their rum carefully in order to achieve the perfect appearance. However, a multitude of factors affects the appearance of rum before it is bottled, potentially compromising both the look and taste of the product. For example, if the rum spends too much time in the barrel or it hasn’t been filtered enough, then it may not be as rich in color or as clear as the producer would like and the taste may not be what customers expect.  

In order to achieve correct and consistent appearance of rums, many manufacturers are turning to spectrophotometric technology. Whether you want to create perfect clarity in a bottle of light rum or you need to ensure that your dark spiced rum is the same shade of amber after it’s removed from the barrel, spectrophotometers can help you reach your goals.

Grape color isn’t just about taste and aesthetics; it has a significant impact on the economic success of grape varieties and grape growers.
Image Source: Rohit Tandon

The color of table grapes may at first glance seem to be simply a matter of arbitrary aesthetics, but in fact, grape color has significant implications for both consumers and grape growers. As such, there is considerable interest in improving coloration via specific chemical compounds and agricultural practices designed to create deeper, richer, and more vibrant hues. Assessing the efficacy of these methods is critical to the success of color enhancing products and processes. But for the most precise results, visual assessment alone is not enough; rather, researchers must turn to spectrophotometric technology to gain a complete picture of the impact that color enhancers have on these delicate fruits.

Why Table Grape Color Matters

Both red and white grapes serve as a good carbohydrate and fiber source and contain a host of vitamins and minerals that fortify health. Red grapes, however, contain something extra: resveratrol and quercetin. Resveratrol is a polyphenolic compound with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that confer a number of health benefits, including heart disease protection, lowering bad cholesterol, and potentially improving brain function. Quercetin is a flavonoid that acts as a potent antioxidant, protecting from free radical damage. In studies, quercetin has been shown to reduce the growth rate of cancer cells, lower high blood pressure, and reduce symptoms of allergies, asthma, and arthritis. As such, red grapes are sought out by health-conscious consumers who want to benefit from the unique properties offered by the deeply colored fruits. 1

For grape growers, good grape color means a more marketable product that can fetch higher prices. Poorly colored grapes can either not be sold, resulting in high levels of waste and lost revenue, or sold for reduced rates, compromising the economic viability of grape growing operations. In some cases, poor color results in grapes not even being harvested. Certain geographic areas are particularly hard-hit by color challenges; red table grape production is “particularly problematic and season after season growers have to deal with lack of color, usually with unsatisfactory results.”2 In Central Chile, for example, “maturity (soluble solids and acidity) is easily reached, but lack of color delays harvest. This delay affects market prices and, on late cultivars, other concerns arise.” Even in well-equipped grape production operations in the United States, adequate fruit color can be a major problem, leading to significant economic losses.

Researchers are looking to plant growth regulators to enhance the color of red grapes, thereby increasing yields and profitability. Image Source: Brain & Storm

Accurate color measurement is critical to ensuring your cookies meet quality, aesthetic, and consistency expectations. Observing these five essential guidelines can help your facility achieve this goal.

1. Understand How Color Influences Consumer Choices

Whether puffy and chewy or thin and crispy, the color of the cookies you produce significantly influences consumer buying choices. Too light, and a customer may fear they're underbaked. Too dark, and consumers might perceive them as burnt. A mix of these extremes can lead to thoughts of poor quality control and dissuade a purchase or repeat buying.

2. Implement Measurement at Every Production Stage

From your oven temperature to the pans you use and the quality of your raw materials, many variables factor into cookie color. Proper caramelization occurs when you understand how these differences impact your goods, which entails measurement at every step. Implementing a proven, standardized color-measuring process at each stage helps you identify where challenges occur and improvement opportunities exist so you can reduce waste.

No matter how potato chip manufacturers distinguish their offerings, they share common challenges — accurately measuring color on irregular, non-flat surfaces and shapes. Variances in seasoning characteristics, opacity, translucence, consistency, and texture only add complexity to the task. Understanding the key role color plays in this industry and the best way to measure it on potato chips will help your facility improve its products and workflows.

The Importance of Potato Chip Color Measurement

Accurately measuring color data in potato chips is critical for several reasons:

• Customer perception: Consumers directly correlate color with both flavor and quality. If they notice inconsistencies, they'll be more likely to choose a different brand with more color uniformity.
• Ingredient variability: Potatoes differ widely in their composition, from sugar, starch, and moisture content to flesh and skin colors or blemishes. Measurement helps ensure you're meeting standards even with these natural variations that can impact the final colors.
• Quality assurance: Taking color measurements at each production stage is a proactive step toward limiting waste. The data reveals where adjustments are necessary to support higher quality.
• Product development: Color measurement helps manufacturers understand how ingredients and processes can alter colors when introducing new flavors or changing production techniques.

Textured products may leave behind residue or crumbs on the surface of the sample holder. As a result, operators usually have to clean the surface thoroughly before testing a new sample. Image Source: Wikipedia user SCEhardt

A popular food manufacturer has a huge number of different snack products in its line, from chips to cookies to crackers. But to determine whether these products are consistent in color from batch to batch, the manufacturer has to perform potentially hundreds of individual color quality control tests each day. This is an immensely time-consuming process; an operator could easily spend a full shift just preparing and testing these samples one by one if using a standard spectrophotometer. Not only does it take a great deal of time to perform these measurements, it sample preparation itself is often a laborious and time-consuming process; the operator has to thoroughly scrub the sample holder between measurements and check the instrument’s sensor for scratches and stray crumbs. Even if the operator only spends five minutes cleaning and preparing the holder for each sample, this could add up to hours of extra work.

In many industries, sample prep is one of the most time-consuming steps in the color quality control process.1 However, sample prep times aren’t the same for every spectrophotometer. When you use a non-contact instrument like HunterLab’s Aeros, you may significantly reduce the time and labor you spend preparing your samples.

Contamination Leads to Longer Prep Time

Contamination is a major challenge when you perform color quality control tests on a sample. This is an especially common problem with loose powder, oily samples, and textured samples, such as ground coffee or potato chips coated with seasoning. Products like these are more prone to contaminating future test samples because they contain very small particles that can be difficult to spot with the naked eye.2 Unless you spend time preparing each sample carefully and cleaning your equipment thoroughly between measurements, you may miss these small particles completely, ultimately interfering with the accuracy of subsequent measurements.

A good example of this is when you test a sample of cookies that are coated with powdered sugar. To prepare a cookie sample for color measurement, you typically have to house the sample inside of a plastic or glass holder with a protective lid. This lid prevents the sensor from touching the sample directly and getting damaged as a result. However, even if you use a protective lid to prevent your sensor from coming into direct contact with the cookie sample, you’ll still have to clean out the powdered sugar residue that the cookies left behind inside of the sample holder. Any leftover powdered sugar in the holder can alter the color reading of your subsequent samples, skewing your results. This is why operators usually spend at least a few minutes thoroughly cleaning the surface of the holder in between readings.3 And these minor cleaning preparations add up over time.

As the ice cream market becomes more competitive and specialized than ever before, spectrophotometric color measurement is becoming increasingly critical to monitor appearance and quality. Image Source: Pexels user Pixabay

Summer is a time for lazy days at the beach, backyard barbecue parties, and chasing fireflies into the evening. It’s also the time for ice cream. Whether lured by the familiar sound of the neighborhood ice cream truck or drawn in by a new wave of socially conscious ice cream shops, we flock toward these frozen treats in massive numbers1. According to Fortune, Americans spent over $13 billion on ice cream in 2013, “not including restaurant sales,” and the average consumer will eat ice cream almost 22 pounds of ice cream each year2. Despite the explosion of the frozen yogurt market, ice cream sales still outnumber frozen yogurt sales by a factor of 24 to 1. What’s more, ice cream sales have shot up in recent years in countries like Turkey, Brazil, and China, adding to what is currently a $78 billion global business.

However, the ice cream market is changing. As the public has become both more health conscious and more interested in food sourcing and quality, ice cream manufacturers have had to re-evaluate their production and marketing strategies. For some, this has meant moving toward more natural ingredients, devoid of the artificial colors and flavors many major ice cream producers have relied on for years. For others, it has opened the door to ice cream manufacturing for the first time, giving creameries the opportunity to enter the burgeoning premium ice cream market. In cities like Los Angeles and New York, people are lining up around the block to sample novel flavors like sticky rice and mango or labneh with pistachio and candied orange offered by artisanal shops3.

But despite the introduction of virtually limitless new and novel flavors, the most popular ice cream variety remains vanilla. According to the International Ice Cream Association, vanilla ice cream is preferred by 29% of consumers, with chocolate coming in second place at a mere 8.9%4. With the transformations occurring within the world of ice cream, however, vanilla can no longer simply be, well, vanilla. Rising consumer demand for high quality products is forcing both long-time players and newcomers to raise the bar and perfect their vanilla ice creams. With the stakes higher than ever, spectrophotometric color measurement is now becoming an increasingly critical part of the manufacturing process.

The color of vanilla ice cream is affected by a range of process variables, including whether real vanilla or synthetic vanillin is used in the manufacturing process. Image Source: Flickr user Joy