Influence of PROP taster status on the consumer acceptability of food made from tannin sorghums.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Condensed tannins in sorghum are powerful antioxidants, beneficial for health. However, tannin sorghums are believed to be unpalatable. The objective was to determine the influence of 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) taster status on consumer acceptability of food from tannin sorghums. Consumers (n = 194) classified by PROP taster status (super, medium and non) evaluated the appearance, flavour, overall liking and texture of sorghum rice from two tannin-free sorghums, PAN 8564 and Phofu, and two tannin sorghums, PAN 3860 (82 g catechin equivalents (CE) kg−1) and NS 5511 (18 g CE kg−1), with high antioxidant activity. RESULTS: The PROP tasters could distinguish differences among the sorghum cultivars varying in tannin content levels, finding PAN 3860 less acceptable than the other sorghums. The non tasters preferred all the cultivars equally, presumably because they could not detect taste (bitter and astringent) differences between the sorghums. With the exception of appearance, tannin sorghum NS 5511 was generally equally preferred by PROP tasters to tannin-free sorghums. CONCLUSION: There appear to some tannin sorghums that are palatable, even to PROP tasters, because the level of tannins is below a sensitivity threshold (ca 20 g CE kg−1). Hence such tannin sorghums could be used to produce acceptable high-antioxidant activity foods. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry.