Consumer acceptance of chocolate formulated with functional ingredient

Abstract

Giving added-value on locally-based agricultural products such as mung bean, fenugreek seed and moringa leaf is considered as an effective way to support the sustainability of agriculture and environment. In this study, powdered mung bean, fenugreek seed and moringa leaf were added into chocolate bar formula. The purpose of this study was specifically to determine the effect of powdered mung bean, fenugreek seed and moringa leaf addition on the consumer acceptance of chocolate bar. The ingredients were added at concentration of 5%, 10% and 15%. A 7-point scale scoring method was used to perform a hedonic test with 60 panellists for colour, taste, texture, aroma and overall attributes. One-way ANOVA followed by DMRT was carried out to analyse the result statistically. The results show that the addition of mung bean, fenugreek seed and moringa leaf significantly decrease the panelists’ acceptance on the chocolate bar at all parameters. As such, the chocolate control obtained an overall score of 6.2 while the chocolate formulated with mung bean, fenugreek seed and moringa leaf got a score range of 3.8–4.7, 2.1–2.9 and 4.5–4.8, respectively. The similar trends were also found at aroma and taste attributes. The decrease of panelists’ acceptance depended on the type of the additional ingredient. The results obtained in this study show the importance of ingredient selection in the making of functional chocolate.