Blackwell Science, LtdOxford, UKFSTFood Service Technology1471-5732Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003399105Original ArticleA three-factor approach to understanding food qualityH.

L. Meiselman

Editorial review
Editorial review

A three-factor approach to understanding food quality: the product, the person and the environment*
Herbert L. Meiselman
US Army Natick Soldier Center, Natick, MA 01760, USA; Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

Abstract
Correspondence: Herbert L. Meiselman, US Army Natick Soldier Center, Natick, MA 01760, USA. Tel: (+1) 508 233 4522; Fax: (+1) 508 233 5527; E-mail: herbert.l.meiselman@us. army.mil Keywords: consumer, context, environment, food acceptance, food quality, product

Food quality and food acceptability were judged from the product alone in the early 20th century, and from the product and consumer beginning in the middle of the 20th century. Later we began to realize the importance of the context or environment in judgments of product quality and assessments of product acceptability. This paper reviews the growth of the three factor approach to understanding quality and acceptability, and presents an example of current research in each. Meal context, expectations, and eating location research are reviewed as examples of the three factor approach. The importance of context is emphasized throughout the review.

Background
During the early part of the 20th century, advances in agriculture, food technology, food processing, and food product development yielded a greater variety of food products than had ever been available before. The acceptability of these products was largely based on the product itself. At that time, product quality was judged in the format of the goods industry, and quality was assessed as a deviation from a standard or the absence of defects. This tradition continues in the quality assurance and quality control elds. In the middle of the 20th century, the role of the consumer began to develop as an important additional consideration of the product in product acceptance and product quality. It appears that the term food acceptability began with the development at the US Army Food and Container Institute in Chicago of a laboratory for the study and measurement of food acceptability, and with the development of techniques to measure acceptance. The Chicago group developed the ninepoint hedonic scale (Peryam & Pilgrim 1957) that con*This paper was rst delivered as a keynote paper at the Fourth International Conference on Culinary Arts and Science (ICCAS 03) held at rebro University, Sweden, 2327 June 2003.

tinues in use today, despite frequent criticism and attempts to remove it. By the end of the third quarter of the 20th century, two areas of interest had developed for those interested in food quality and food acceptability; those factors surrounding the food itself, and those factors surrounding the consumer/eater. The latter factors included psychological, sociological and physiological factors.

Recognizing context in Natick research

When the Army food research programme moved from Chicago to Natick, the main focus of the programme was feeding soldiers in the eld under varying conditions of climate. The behavioural scientists at Natick became involved in a series of both eld and laboratory studies that monitored eating from several days up to 45 days. Before these long-term eld projects, they had worked under the simple assumption that people ate what they liked, so that by measuring preference and acceptance, one could predict intake. A number of laboratory studies showed good correlations between acceptance and intake, and the researchers had assumed that this relationship would hold in long-term eld situations. We recently observed this again in a midday meal study, conducted in a commercial sensory laboratory

Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003 Food Service Technology, 3, pp. 99105

99

100

A three-factor approach to understanding food quality H. L. Meiselman

Table 1 Acceptance judgements and estimated portions consumed for three components of a laboratory test meal* About one-fourth n Acceptance About three-fourths n Acceptance

A few bites n Salad Male Female Pizza Male Female Tea Male Female Acceptance

About one half n Acceptance

Ate all n Acceptance Mean

5 4

6.40 4.25

4 15

6.00 6.93

13 22

7.46 6.68

37 94

7.03 7.61

90 122

7.61 7.80

7.4 7.5

5.4c
0 8 2.88 3 19

6.7b
5.00 4.79 9 50

7.0a,b
6.00 6.24 16 79

7.4a,b
6.44 7.01 121 101

7.7a
6.95 7.69 6.80 6.84

2.9d
3 15 2.00 2.80 5 20

4.8c
3.80 5.15 14 45

6.2b
5.50 6.82 18 60

6.9a,b
7.11 7.38 109 116

7.3a
7.28 7.95 6.87 7.10

2.7d

4.9c

6.5b

7.3a

7.6a

*Numbers followed by the same letters (a,b,c,d) are not signicantly different; different letters represent differences. Within each cell are shown the overall average acceptance rating (scale 19), for one product at one level of consumption, as well as the average acceptance for male and female. Source: Meiselman et al. (2003).

Table 2 Intake and acceptance measures for long-term eld studies with soldiers and students, and short-term studies with soldiers of military operational rations* Intake Long-term studies Soldiers in the eld (33 days) Students in the lab (44 days) Short-term studies Soldiers in the cafeteria Soldiers in eld *Source: Hirsch & Kramer (1993). Acceptance

2189 3149 3848 2876

7.05 6.06 6.30 6.90

(Meiselman et al. 2003). There was increasing consumption with increasing acceptance for salad, pizza, and tea (Table 1), which all monotonically increased. Salad showed the smallest range of acceptance scores, from 5.4 for those eating a few bites to 7.7 for those eating all of the salad. For pizza and tea, acceptance scores varied from 2.9 and 2.7 to 7.3 and 7.6, respectively, on the standard nine-point hedonic scale from dislike extremely (1) to like extremely (9). A clearly acceptable product, as evidenced by complete sample consumption, yielded a rating in the mid 7s for all products. The correlation between acceptance and consumption was highly signicant for salad (r = 0.28, P < 0.0001), pizza (r = 0.46, P < 0.0001), and tea (r = 0.56, P < 0.0001). At Natick, our understanding of what controls eating changed radically in the mid 1980s. This change occurred slowly because we were slow to change our old views on the role of product factors. We clung to the view that the product controls eating, and we were

encouraged in this view by the food technologists and other product developers who sponsored our work. Our rst experience with the new reality occurred in our rst study of long-term eating patterns in soldiers, a eld study that lasted 33 days and was followed by a more controlled university study of students that lasted 45 days (Hirsch & Kramer 1993). In the eld, soldiers ate only two-thirds of the foods provided (2189/3600 kcal), and their intake declined over the course of the study from 2225 to 1681 kcal (Table 2). However, food acceptability remained high (7.05/9.00) throughout the study, leading us to conclude that acceptability did not necessarily predict intake. In the university study, students ate more food (3149 kcal), but rated it lower (6.06) than soldiers (7.05). So we were faced with the puzzling situation in which soldiers liked the food more but ate less of it, while students liked the food less but ate more of it. We conducted a follow-up study to test these results. We fed the same army eld rations to soldiers both in a cafeteria and in the eld. We found (Table 2) that soldiers ate about 1000 kcal more in the cafeteria (3848 kcal) than in the eld (2876 kcal), and rated the food higher in the eld (6.90) than in the cafeteria (6.30). Once again, we observed the relationship of soldiers eating more but rating the food lower in cafeterias, and eating less but rating the food higher in the eld. We began to realize that the factors that distinguished the eld from the cafeteria were responsible for the effects we were observing. We called these effects situational, contextual, or environmental, and rst reported our observations at the 1987 Reading Sympo-

Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003 Food Service Technology, 3, pp. 99105

A three-factor approach to understanding food quality H. L. Meiselman

101

sium on Food Acceptability (Meiselman et al. 1987). I began to argue about the importance of contextual effects, and the importance of conducting food acceptance and intake studies in natural eating environments (Meiselman et al. 2000). Why was Natick one of the rst laboratories to study environment? Because most food product development research is conducted in laboratories, and context is eliminated or controlled in the laboratory. Of course, the laboratory is its own context, and people come to the laboratory with their own expectations of what will happen and what the food will be like. One cannot eliminate context; one can just choose a simpler context. Natick was forced into more realistic contexts because of the need to predict intake in specic situations; one cannot do this from laboratory research. I would like to present several contemporary areas of research dealing with the product, the person and the environment, the three factors controlling impressions of food quality. Concerning the product, I will present the role of meal context in looking at individual meal items. Concerning the individual I will discuss consumer expectations, and their role in changing impressions of products; and I will describe studies that present the same products in different locations to determine the effects of environment.

The effect of other foods in the meal

Prior studies have examined the relationship between overall meal acceptability and the proportion that each meal component contributes (Table 3). The main dish within a meal usually accounts for about one half of the overall acceptability, with the remaining one half distributed among the other components (Rogozenski & Moskowitz 1982; Turner & Collison 1988). Side dishes such as salad, vegetable or starch account for much less of overall meal acceptance, usually less than half the value of the main dish. This can change in different contexts with different types of meals, for example in sandwich and pizza meals, the main dish

(sandwich or pizza) accounts for most of the overall acceptability (Hedderley & Meiselman 1995). The dominance of the main dish is also supported by how trained chefs plan meals. They usually begin with the main dish, and plan the rest of the meal around it (Schaffheitle 2000). Other aspects of meal acceptability have been modelled, including monotony, temporal factors, food combinations, and time since last serving (Moskowitz 2000). Time since last serving addresses the issue of monotony, and tries to determine how acceptable a meal is when it was eaten recently or not recently. This is important for the food service industry, especially the institutional sector or other sectors that feed the same people frequently, and where the food provided might be the primary or only source of nutrients. Most people seek variety in their meals, although a small percentage like eating the same foods often (Kramer et al. 2001). King et al. (2003) recently compared food products individually within the standard conditions of a hall taste test, or within a meal setting. The lunch-time meal consisted of pizza, salad and iced tea. Ratings increased from the laboratory setting to the meal setting for salad (7.07.5) and tea (5.97.0), but remained the same for pizza (7.27.2). Product differences between two versions of each product maintained differences for the salad and the pizza but not for the tea. Thus, it appears that testing foods in meal contexts rather than individually might enhance their ratings while maintaining product distinctions. Clearly, we need more research on testing foods within meal contexts rather than individually.

The person and the role of expectations

During the 1990s, psychologists studying food-related behaviour borrowed from expectation theory. Expectation can be dened as the belief that products will possess certain sensory attributes at certain intensities and/or the belief that the products will be liked/disliked to a certain degree (Cardello 1994). Expectation is

Table 3 Meal models developed in three separate studies distinguished three different meal types in which the main dish accounts for different percentages of overall meal acceptance Rogozenski & Moskowitz (1982) Meal = 5.68 + 2.7 entre + 0.53 starch + 0.42 veg + 0.25 salad + 0.57 dessert Turner & Collison (1988) Meal = 0.57 + 0.43 entre + 0.21 sweet + 0.14 starter + 0.14 potato Hedderley & Meiselman (1995) Main dish meal = 3.39 + 0.61 entre + 0.22 starch + 0.29 veg + 0.32 salad + 0.22 dessert + 0.21 fruit + 0.23 accessories + 0.12 candy Pizza Meal = 1.83 + 0.90 pizza + 0.24 starch + 0.28 veg + 0.28 fruit + 0.24 accessories + 0.28 candy Sandwich meal = 2.98 + 0.71 sandwich + 0.27 salad + 0.24 dessert + 0.24 fruit + 0.24 accessories + 0.21 candy

Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003 Food Service Technology, 3, pp. 99105

102

A three-factor approach to understanding food quality H. L. Meiselman

Table 4 Summary of predicted effects of disconrmed consumer expectations* Product better than expected (positive disconrmation) Decrease Increase Decrease Decrease (under low disconrm) Increase (under high disconrm) Product worse than expected (negative disconrmation) Increase Decrease Decrease Increase (under low disconrm) Decrease (under high disconrm)

Model Assimilation Contrast Generalized negativity Assimilation-contrast

*Adapted from Cardello (1995), Tables 1013.

another attitude that is brought into the food situation. Expectations have been shown to be a potent variable in acceptability. The acceptability of a product appears to be related to both product characteristics and to what people expect the product to be. Products that are expected to be better are rated higher, and products that are expected to be worse are rated lower. We now use expectations as a key variable in acceptance research (Tuorila et al. 1998). Expectation theory has presented four different models (Table 4) to account for expectation effects on judgements of product acceptability; specically the models explain disconrmed expectations, that is, what happens when the actual product is different from the expected product (see Cardello 1994). All models agree when expected performance equals actual performance. The assimilation model predicts that the product rating moves in the direction of the expectation for both negative and positive expectations. With a positive expectation the product would be rated more highly than the same product rated blind. This is the basis for luxury labelling. The contrast model predicts that ratings move away from the blind point when the consumer perceives a difference between expectation and actual. Someone who is disappointed will severely down-rate an item, more than the actual quality would suggest. The contrast model explains why a lower rated sample is judged even more harshly when rated along with higher rated samples. The assimilation-contrast model predicts that ratings will assimilate, that is, move towards the expectation, except when a threshold is reached, and then will show contrast, that is, a magnied reaction away from the expectation (Table 4). With low disconrmation of expectations, an assimilation model holds; with higher disconrmations, a contrast model holds. An example of this is eating foods in a high quality restaurant; if the food is fairly good, you might like it more because of the assimilation effect induced by the positive expectations of the restaurant. If the food is quite poor, you will rate it even lower than you might if the food were presented blind this is a con-

trast effect. The fourth model, the generalized negativity model, predicts that products are rated lower under all disconrmations, that is, whenever expectation are not met. In some of the earliest studies on manipulating food expectations, Cardello & Sawyer (1992) manipulated expectations of candy or beverages in three different ways. In one test, they compared expected liking and actual liking for a candy product; in a second test they manipulated expected liking of beverages with positive, negative or minimum information paragraphs; and in a third test they used pre-established baseline product ratings to test for conrmation disconrmation. With one exception, all the three tests supported the assimilation model. The one exception supported a contrast model, and Cardello & Sawyer (1992) point out that contrast effects are rarely observed. Siret & Issanchou (2000) also supported an assimilation model in their study of traditional and nontraditional pate de campagne. They manipulated expectations with different labels and lists of ingredients. They found further support for a greater likelihood to assimilate towards expectations after a negative disconrmation that after a positive one. Negative information has less impact than positive information. It is not clear why this is the case; perhaps it is because lower ratings have less room to move lower than higher ratings have to move higher. As the authors point out, it is still not clear how much consumers attend to product descriptions in actual purchase or dining situations. In other words, we know how expectations function in general, but not necessarily how they function in the real world. People also have clear expectations of how good food will be in different locations. Cardello et al. (1996) asked people to rate their expected liking of foods in different locations. These were ranked as follows: home > traditional full service restaurant > diner/fast food > school foodservice > military foodservice > airline food service = hospital foodservice

Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003 Food Service Technology, 3, pp. 99105

A three-factor approach to understanding food quality H. L. Meiselman

103

Eating location The effect of eating location

Until recently there have been few studies of eating location itself. Meiselman et al. (2000) demonstrated the importance of eating location by presenting identical foods in different locations. In the rst study, conducted in the training restaurant and the student refectory (cafeteria) at Bournemouth University, UK, Army rations were shipped from the USA, removed from their packaging, and served on plates to the paying customers in the restaurant and to the paying students in the cafeteria. Students working on the project asked the restaurant patrons and the students to rate their food. The results showed that restaurant patrons rated their overall meal one scale-point higher (7.06) on a ninepoint hedonic scale than the student patrons (6.16). Meiselman then joined with Dr Jennifer Crouch at East Carolina University, USA, which also had a training restaurant and student cafeterias. In the rst study the same prepared meal was served in the training restaurant and in a student food science laboratory. The restaurant meal scored higher. In the second study, the same prepared meal was served in dining halls, in the training restaurant, and in a food science laboratory (Table 5). Results show that the training restaurant again scored highest. Interestingly the laboratory rated in the middle. This suggests that laboratory measurement of food acceptance might represent a moderate perception of product acceptability between the highs of restaurants and the lows of cafeterias. Further research is needed to determine whether laboratory measurement represents a middle position in the overall scheme of locations.

and student cafeterias. These were adequate to demonstrate the overall location effect, but not to delve further into the location variable. Second, we needed to separate the consumers from the locations that they occupy. This is a difcult task because locations usually come with their own people. Different people eat in jails, in hospitals, in fast food restaurants, in fancy restaurants and in hotels. Professor John Edwards and I, working in England, studied the acceptance of an identical prepared food product (chicken and rice) served in 10 different locations (Edwards et al. 2003). These ranged from a military camp and elderly housing to restaurants and hotels (Table 6). Importantly, some of the same demographic groups were in more than one location. The students were served in both their cafeteria and in the white-tablecloth training restaurant. Middle-aged patrons were found in the restaurants, hotels, and in the private party. Elderly patrons were found in the training restaurant, and the two elderly facilities. Younger people were found in the school. This study included a wide range of eating locations and a wide range of people. The study found signicant differences in acceptability of the same prepared food served in the different locations. In Table 6, locations marked with the same letter are not different. A pattern of differences does emerge. The lowest ratings appear to be those that can be described as institutional, the army, university, hospital, etc. The highest ratings are those that are whitetablecloth dining, the restaurant and hotel.

Locations and expectations.

Many factors contribute to the differences in perceived acceptability in different locations. However, we
Table 6 Acceptance ratings for the same food served in 10 different locations* Overall acceptability Location/situation Army training camp University staff refectory Private boarding school Freshmans buffet Private party Residential home (elderly) Student refectory Day care centre (elderly) University 4-star restaurant Hotel 4-star restaurant Mean 6.63a 6.64a 6.66a 6.69a 6.99a,b 7.05a,b 7.09a,b 7.09a,b 7.58b 7.63b n 43 36 88 83 77 43 33 33 19 32

Categorizing eating locations

The signicant effects of eating location prompted us to examine other eating locations. We did this for two reasons: rst, we needed a broader representation of eating locations than we had been able to nd in our rst studies that were limited to training restaurants
Table 5 Effects of serving the identical food item (Fettucine Alf redo with chicken) in three different settings on ratings of avour texture and colour and overall acceptance* Overall Laboratory Dining hall Restaurant 5.79 5.28 6.67 Flavour 5.80 5.18 6.78 Texture 5.15 5.13 6.28 Colour 5.65 5.39 6.33

*Source: Meiselman et al. (2000).

*Means with different letters (a,b) are signicantly different. Source: Edwards et al. (2003).

Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003 Food Service Technology, 3, pp. 99105

104

A three-factor approach to understanding food quality H. L. Meiselman

Table 7 Ranking of expectations (Cardello et al. 1996) and actual acceptance ratings on the nine-point hedonic scale in different locations for a chicken and rice dish (Edwards et al. 2003)* Ranking of expectations Home Restaurant Fast food School Military Airline Hospital Ranking of acceptance

We will leave it to future writers to determine what is included in context. However, I wish to summarize by saying that consideration of food quality must consider the food product itself, the eater, and the environment. and these three factors need to be considered in an integrated manner, because each affects the other, and they need to be considered together.

Restaurant 7.63, 7.58

References
Student refectory 7.09, Boarding school 6.66 Army Camp 6.63 Elderly residential home 7.05 Cardello AV (1994) Consumer expectations and their role in food acceptance. In: Measurement of Food Preferences (eds HJM MacFie, DMH Thomson), pp. 25397. Blackie Academic and Professional: London. Cardello AV (1995) The role of images, stereotypes and expectations in the acceptance and consumption of rations. In: Not Eating Enough (ed. B Marriott), pp. 177201. National Academy Press: Washington, DC. Cardello AV, Bell R, Kramer FM (1996) Attitudes of consumers toward military and other institutional foods. Food Quality and Preference 7:720. Cardello AV, Sawyer FM (1992) Effects of disconrmed consumer expectations on food acceptability. Journal of Sensory Studies 7:25377. Edwards JSA, Meiselman HL, Edwards A, Lesher L (2003) The inuence of eating location on the acceptability of identically prepared foods. Food Quality and Preference 14:64752. Hedderley D, Meiselman HL (1995) Modeling meal acceptability in a free choice environment. Food Quality and Preference 6:1526. Hirsch E, Kramer MF (1993) Situational inuences on food intake. In: Nutritional Needs in Hot Environments (ed. BM Marriott), pp. 21543. National Academy Press: Washington, DC. King SC, Weber AJ, Meiselman HL, Lv N (2003) The effect of meal situation, social interaction, physical environment and choice on food acceptability. Presented to Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium, Boston, USA, July 2024, 2003, Oral paper O77. Abstracted in Symposium Proceedings. Kramer FM, Lesher LL, Meiselman HL (2001) Monotony and choice: repeated serving of the same food item to soldiers under eld conditions. Appetite 36:23940. Meiselman HL, Hirsch ES, Popper RD (1987) Sensory hedonic and situational factors in food acceptance and consumption. In: Food Acceptability (ed. DMH Thomson), pp. 7788. Elsevier Applied Science: London. Meiselman HL, Johnson JL, Reeve W, Crouch JE (2000) Demonstrations of the inuence of the eating environment on food acceptance. Appetite 35:2317. Meiselman HL, King S, Weber A (2003) Relationship of acceptability to consumption in a meal-testing environment, and the use of intake to predict product acceptability in a meal. Appetite 41:2034. Moskowitz HR (2000) Integrating consumers, developers, designers, and researchers into the development and optimization of meals. In: Dimensions of the Meal (ed. HL Meiselman), pp. 24569. Aspen: Gaithersburg, MD. Peryam DR, Pilgrim FJ (1957) Hedonic scale method of measuring food preferences. Food Technology 11:914.

*Expectations were collected in the USA from students and soldiers; acceptance ratings were collected in the UK from people in these different locations.

believe that one of the dominant factors is the different expectations towards the different locations. As noted above, Cardello et al. (1996) reported that people rated their expected liking of foods in different locations in the following order: home > traditional full service restaurant > diner/fast food > school foodservice > military foodservice > airline food service = hospital foodservice We examined the relationship between the expected acceptance and the ranking of locations according to acceptance. There is a good relationship between the two rankings, suggesting that expectations are an important part of the perceived differences between locations (Table 7).

Conclusion
I have presented our current view of the major factors that affect perception of food quality: the food itself, who is eating the food and their characteristics, and the environment in which the food is consumed. I have also presented current research in each of these three areas, focusing on the meal context for food products, the expectations of the diner, and the different locations for food service. However, the reader will notice that each of these three could be considered a contextual variable itself. When Rozin & Turoila (1992) considered context, they suggested the following: consider a person eating an apple in a particular situation. Context is everything outside of that event that has relevance to that event. This denition makes context very large. and it makes each of our factors above, meal context, expectations, and locations, contextual variables.

Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003 Food Service Technology, 3, pp. 99105

A three-factor approach to understanding food quality H. L. Meiselman

105

Rogozenski JE, Moskowitz HR (1982) A system for the preference evaluation of cyclic menus. Journal of Food Service Systems 2:13961. Rozin P, Turoila H. (1992) Simultaneous and temporal contextual inuences on food acceptance. Food Quality and Preference 4:1120. Schaffheitle JM. (2000) Meal design: a dialogue with four acclaimed chefs. In: Dimensions of The Meal (ed. HL Meiselman), pp. 270310. Aspen: Gaithersburg, MD. Siret F, Issanchou S (2000) Traditional process: inuence on sensory properties and on consumers expectation and lik-

ing. Application to pate de campagne. Food Quality and Preference 11:21728. Tuorila HM, Meiselman HL, Cardello AV, Lesher LL (1998) Effect of expectations and the denition of product category on the acceptance of unfamiliar foods. Food Quality and Preference 9:42130. Turner M, Collison R (1988) Consumer acceptance of meals and meal components. Food Quality and Preference 1:21 4.

Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003 Food Service Technology, 3, pp. 99105