Influence of types of soymilk formulations on sensory characteristics: a study in northern region of Ghana

Five soymilk products formulated differently were compared in terms of appearance, color, taste, smell, and texture. They were also compared in terms of their overall sensory characteristics. Fourteen semi-trained Ghanaian students majoring in Nutrition and Food Scienceevaluated each of the 5 different formulations of soymilk in a randomized order. For each sensory characteristics, the rating options were “Excellent”, “Good”, “Fair”, and “Poor” coded respectively as 10, 7, 5, and 3. A Friedman test was carried out to compare appearance, color, taste, smell, texture, and overall score for the five soymilk formulations; and pairwise comparisons to determine the source of significant differences in mean ranks for color, taste, smell, texture, and the overall score were performed using the Wilcoxon Sign Rank test. The results showed that Soymilk with pineapple flavor (100g in 1000mL formulation) was the most preferred in terms of color, smell, and texture and that Soymilk with banana flavor (100g in 1000mL formulation) was the most preferred in terms of taste.The magnitude of the differences observed ranged from medium to large for most of the differences observed. The results of this study will provide decision-makers in Ghana with the right knowledge in their effort to improve nutrition.