The biscuits of the present study were manufactured by biscuit
producers, contrary to the laboratory manufactured biscuits in
Drewnowski et al. (1998). The impact of fat and sugar reduction
on famous French biscuits manufactured in industrial conditions
(wrapped in sealed plastic packages and consumed after several
weeks, similar to consumption conditions of commercial biscuits)
could be assessed in this study. Furthermore, for industrial reasons,
the level of emulsifiers, bulking agents or fibres increased so this is
difficult to distinguish the impact of these modifications from the
impact of fat or sugar reduction.
For practical reasons, some subjects came at 10 am or 3 pm
(n = 22) whereas all the others came at 5:30 pm (n = 57). We
wanted to verify that it did not have effect on measures, so we performed
a split-plot analysis. No effect was observed so we kept the
results of the whole group.
We hypothesised that a reduction of the sugar and fat content
in several types of biscuits would have different impacts on sensory
perception and liking (hypothesis iiii). Four types of biscuits
were chosen among the wide range of French commercial dry biscuits.
However, for technical reasons, the level of reduction of the
different biscuits was dependent on the biscuits, and some biscuits
were only reduced for one sensation (sugar or fat content).
Furthermore, as discussed earlier, modifications of ingredients
depended on biscuits. Results emphasised that the types of biscuits
reduced for sugar and/or fat content showed similarities but also
distinct results. These results indicate that generalisation of these
results for all types of commercial biscuits would be difficult and
would be even more difficult to extrapolate to other categories of
products. However, these results obtained on four ranges of biscuits
are encouraging, and this could encourage other industrials
to try to reduce the fat and sugar content in their products