Snack Food Color Measurement

Snacks Color Measurement

Today's 'on-the-go' pace finds consumer eating patterns changing from the traditional three main meals per day to several smaller meals, as many as 8-9, throughout the day. This trend is followed by healthier snack foods outpacing indulgent snack foods 4 to 1. As convenient, nutritious snacks or mini-meals increase in demand, the world's top snack food producers like PepsiCo, Kellogg, Frito-Lay, and Keebler rely on HunterLab solutions to help ensure color quality, a key attribute to a consumer's decision when purchasing snack foods.

Snack foods are quite varied, from potato chips to roasted nuts and pretzels, and from crackers to candy and peanut butter. They range in flavors that include sweet, sour, bitter, salty, savory, metallic and even pungent. Measurement techniques will vary depending on the snack food type, which often includes coarse, non-homogeneous and irregularly shaped food products.

Most snack foods will be opaque in nature so are best measured using a Directional 45°/0° reflectance instrument. This is the measurement mode and geometry that most closely matches the way the human eye 'sees' color. It is also important to ensure the instrument has a large area view since the snack food will typically be contained in a sample holder like a petri dish or bowl.

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HunterLab has a variety of snack food color measurement instruments—including benchtop, portable and non-contact spectrophotometers—to fit your specific needs.

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