Sensory Analysis Report: Comparing Four Nut Product Attributes

This report presents a sensory analysis conducted on four different nut products: roasted peanuts, roasted cashews, roasted almonds, and salted roasted macadamia. The study aimed to evaluate and compare the products based on their sensory attributes, specifically focusing on saltiness, smoothness, and crunchiness levels. The methodology involved a panel of respondents who were asked to rate these attributes using a Likert scale. Descriptive statistics, including mean scores, were used to analyze the data and identify differences between the products. The results indicated significant differences in saltiness and crunchiness levels among the products, with salted roasted macadamia being the saltiest and roasted almonds being the crunchiest. However, no significant differences were found in the smoothness texture of the nuts. The report also discusses the limitations of the study, such as the small sample size, and provides conclusions based on the findings, highlighting the varying sensory profiles of the nut products. The statistical analysis included the use of one-way ANOVA to determine the significance of the differences in the product attributes.

Running head: Sensory Analysis 1
Sensory Analysis
Name
Institution
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Sensory Product Analysis 2
Sensory Analysis
Introduction
Sensory evaluation is a scientific process to evaluate the different attributes of food; these
attributes are smell, flavor, and texture, among others (O'Mahony, 2017). Sensory evaluation can
be categorized into two methods of carrying out the process, namely; analytical sensory methods
and affective, sensory methods. Since the sample size is consistent of 15 respondents, the most
appropriate method to use was the analytical sensory evaluation methods (Amelio, 2019). The
report has made use of descriptive statistics to give more information and validating the results
of the analysis for the four nut products. Descriptive statistics are quantitative measures used to
describe the nature of the variable (Young & Wessnitzer, 2016). Normally descriptive statistics
consists of two phases the measures of central tendency i.e., mean, median and mode, and
measures of variation i.e., variance, range, standard deviation, etc. The report uses descriptive
statistics analysis to investigate the different product attributes for four types of nuts namely;
product 1 (Roasted Peanuts), product 2 (Roasted cashew), product 3 (Roasted almonds) and
product 4 (Salted roasted macadamia). The product attributes, also known as the product
compositions under consideration are salty levels, smoothness, and crunchiness for the four
products given above. The attribute scores for salty, smooth, and crunchiness is in the form of a
Likert scale of values between 0 – 15, where zero is least salty, smooth and crunchy and 15 is
most sweet, smooth, and crunchy.
Aims and objectives
The primary aim for the project is to evaluate the differences in salt levels, smoothness levels
and crunchiness levels for, Roasted peanuts, Roasted cashew, Roasted almonds, and Salted

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roasted macadamia. The results obtained will be able to indicate the highest mean scores for the
sensory attributes salty, smoothness, and crunchy levels for the four nut products under the
study.
Methodology
 The respondents were given instructions on how to carry the survey and how to give
scores to the product attributes salty taste, smoothness, and crunchiness of four nut
products
 The respondents were given samples of the four different nut products, roasted peanuts,
roasted cashew, roasted almonds, and salted roasted macadamia.
 The respondents were given time to experience the different attributes and give the marks
accordingly.
 The respondents were required to give a salty level, a smoothness level, and the
crunchiness level of the four sample products given.
Results
The results presented for this report were used to evaluate the following research hypotheses for
each product attribute i.e., salty, smoothness and crunchiness for the four types of nuts, peanuts,
cashew, almonds, and macadamia
Salty attribute
 H0: There is no sensory difference in salty levels for roasted peanuts, roasted cashew,
roasted almonds, and salted roasted macadamia.
 H1: There is a sensory difference in salty levels for roasted peanuts, roasted cashew,
roasted almonds, and salted roasted macadamia.

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Smoothness attribute
 H0: There is no sensory difference in smoothness levels for roasted peanuts, roasted
cashew, roasted almonds, and salted roasted macadamia.
 H1: There is a sensory difference in smoothness levels for roasted peanuts, roasted
cashew, roasted almonds, and salted roasted macadamia.
Crunchiness attribute
 H0: There is no sensory difference in crunchiness levels for roasted peanuts, roasted
cashew, roasted almonds, and salted roasted macadamia.
 H1: There is a sensory difference in crunchiness levels for roasted peanuts, roasted
cashew, roasted almonds, and salted roasted macadamia.
The results show that there are major differences in the level of salt in the four nut products,
peanuts, cashew, almonds, and macadamia as determined one-way ANOVA (F (2, 15) = 2.4155,
p = 0.0138 ) Hence the null hypothesis was rejected, and the alternative hypothesis was adopted
(Sarstedt & Mooi, 2019). However, there exist no major differences in the smoothness texture
for the four products of nuts as determined one-way ANOVA (F (2, 15) = 0.8672, p = 0.59715).
In this case, the null hypothesis was not rejected. According to the results, there is a significant
difference in the crunchiness levels for peanuts, cashew nuts, almonds, and macadamia nuts as
determined one-way ANOVA (F (2, 15) = 2.007, p = 0.04135). In this case, the alternative
hypothesis is adopted for crunchiness levels.

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Discussion
The descriptive analysis provided showed that the four different nut products had different scores
for each of the valuation product attributes salty, smoothness, and crunchy. The results obtained
showed that salted roasted macadamia nuts had the highest score for smoothness sensory with an
average of 9.4 and the least smoothness sensory nut product being roasted peanuts with an
average of 5.3. However, the variation for salt levels for the four products further analysis
showed that the salty levels are not significantly different for the four products. The analysis also
indicated that the saltiest nut as salted roasted macadamia with an average salt level of 9.06,
while the least salty nut product was found to be roasted peanuts with a salt level average of 5.2
(Sasaki,& Motoyama, 2016). In relation to the one-way analysis of variance for presented in the
analysis indicated that there is a significant difference in the salty levels for the four nut
products. From the analysis, the preferred salty taste nut product was found to be the salted
roasted macadamia nuts while roasted peanuts are the least salty nut product. For the crunchiness
attribute, the most crunchy nut product was obtained to be roasted almonds with a crunchy
average of 10.6, while the least crunchy nut product being the salted roasted macadamia
(Tuorila, 2015). Further analysis confirmed there is a significant difference in the crunchiness
sensory levels for roasted peanuts, roasted cashew, roasted almonds, and salted roasted
macadamia.
Limitations
The only limitation to the case study provided on this report concerns the sample size. The
sample size drawn for the study was 15 respondents, and the number is very small. For the study

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to increase the accuracy of the study by increasing the sample size to have more data for
analysis.
Conclusion
According to the results presented there is sufficient evidence that shows roasted peanuts, roasted
cashew, roasted almonds, and salted roasted macadamia have different sensory attributes for
salty levels in the nuts, smoothness texture of the nut and the crunchiness of the nut. The results
have shown that there are significant salty sensory differences in the product nuts with salt-
roasted macadamia nuts being the saltiest nut product, while the roasted peanuts are the least
salty nuts. The results concluded that there is no significant sensory difference in the smoothness
of the nut textures for the roasted peanuts, roasted cashew, roasted almonds, and salted roasted
macadamia. Hence, all the products tend to feel to have the same smoothness. Crunchiness had a
significant sensory difference and the most crunchy nut product among the four is the roasted
almonds, while the least crunchy nut product among the four is roasted macadamia nuts. The
sensory analysis has met the set objective, which was to evaluate the sensory attributes for salty,
smoothness, and crunchiness for four nut products roasted peanuts, roasted cashew, roasted
almonds, and salted roasted macadamia.

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References
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variation (CVr%) for measuring panel group performance in official tasting sessions.
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O'Mahony, M. (2017). Sensory evaluation of food: statistical methods and procedures.
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Sarstedt, M., & Mooi, E. (2019). Descriptive Statistics. A Concise Guide to Market Research
(pp. 91-150). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Sasaki, K., & Motoyama, M. (2016). Characterization of evaluation items for sensory traits of
eggs and cooked eggs.
Tuorila, H. (2015). From sensory evaluation to sensory and consumer research of food: An
autobiographical perspective. Food quality and preference, 40, 255-262.
Young, J., & Wessnitzer, J. (2016). Descriptive statistics, graphs, and visualization. Modern
statistical methods for HCI (pp. 37-56). Springer, Cham.