Desenvolvimento de uma nova gama de barras de cereais

Abstract

In order to adapt to the new millennium, the food industry must constantly reinvent itself, assuming an important role in providing food products that correspond to consumers' expectations and needs. Therefore, the Cerealis Group focus on monitoring trends and market evolution, both national and international, through the development of new products and the constant improvement of the products it sells. The fast-paced lifestyle of consumers and the need for a more nutritious and healthy diet have driven the demand for "snacks", such as cereal bars, a product characterized by its convenience and nutritional characteristics (Kantar, 2020). Following these trends, the goal of this project was to develop a new range of cereal bars, composed of three distinct lines, with the incorporation of dried fruits, ancestral cereals and a healthier side, without added sugars. The development of the cereal bars followed a set of steps that went from the formulation of the bars at laboratory level to the development of industrial tests of the most promising prototypes. Initially, the laboratory development focused on identifying the raw materials to be incorporated into a base formulation. After successive laboratory tests, the necessary adjustments were made in order to obtain formulations with a higher potential to be submitted to an industrial scale test. The final bars, the cereal bar with dried fruits and the cereal bar with no added sugars, were characterized in terms of nutritional composition and sensory attributes. Therefore, an external sensory analysis was carried out with a panel of 44 consumers in order to evaluate, through a hedonic scale, the consumer preference regarding the appearance, texture, smell and taste of the samples, as well as their purchase interest. The results obtained allowed to verify a good acceptance by the consumers, since the majority attributed the classification "I liked a lot" to the two samples. Overall, it was possible to materialize the concepts designed for the three different cereal bars, resulting in prototypes with potential, aligned with current trends and with consumers' needs.

Date of Award	17 Feb 2021
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Maria Gomes (Supervisor) & Margarida Bacelar (Co-Supervisor)