To encourage children to frequently consume wild blueberries as part of their dietary patterns, incorporating blueberry powder into specific foods may be an effective strategy. Thus, it is important to determine appropriate types of food products that both minimize food processing-induced loss of beneficial components of blueberries (e.g., anthocyanins) and satisfy at the same time both nutritional and sensory aspects. For clinical studies assessing the health benefits of blueberry-containing food samples, it would be important to ensure children consume the entire portion of the test samples. This study, therefore, aimed at determining how sensory acceptability (liking) and psychological reward (wanting) of wild blueberry-based foods vary over multiple steps of ad libitum consumption: appearance, first bite/sip, half bite/sip, and full consumption. Five different types of foods containing the targeted amount of wild blueberry powder were prepared for sensory testing (oatmeal bar, beverage, ice pop, gummy, and cookie), and the residual amounts of total anthocyanin and chlorogenic acid were measured to confirm levels targeted to deliver bioactive amounts of these phytochemicals. Results showed that while overall liking and desire to eat did not differ among the five samples at the appearance and first bite/sip steps, they differed significantly at the end of consumption. Although children liked and wanted to consume the cookies more when compared to beverages, ice pops, and/or gummies, total anthocyanin contents were lower in cookies and gummies than in wild blueberry powder, beverage, and ice pop samples. Notably, the oatmeal bars with significant amounts of total anthocyanin and chlorogenic acid did not significantly differ from the cookies with respect to overall liking, desire to eat, and the amount consumed. In conclusion, this study shows that sensory evaluation using multiple bites/sips of ad libitum food consumption, along with a measurement of beneficial compounds, is efficient in determining appropriate vehicles for clinical studies of wild blueberry-containing foods.

为了鼓励儿童经常食用野生蓝莓作为饮食模式的一部分，将蓝莓粉添加到特定食物中可能是一种有效的策略。因此，确定适当的食品类型非常重要，既可以最大限度地减少食品加工引起的蓝莓有益成分（例如花青素）的损失，又可以同时满足营养和感官方面的要求。对于评估含蓝莓食品样本对健康益处的临床研究来说，确保儿童食用全部测试样本非常重要。因此，本研究旨在确定野生蓝莓食品的感官可接受性（喜欢）和心理奖励（想要）在随意食用的多个步骤中如何变化：外观、第一口/小口、半口/小口和完全食用。准备了五种不同类型的含有目标含量野生蓝莓粉的食品（燕麦棒、饮料、冰棒、软糖和饼干）进行感官测试，并测量了总花青素和绿原酸的残留量，以确认目标水平提供这些植物化学物质的生物活性量。结果显示，虽然五个样品的总体喜好和进食欲望在外观和第一口/啜饮步骤上没有差异，但在食用结束时却存在显着差异。尽管与饮料、冰棒和/或软糖相比，孩子们更喜欢并且想要食用饼干，但饼干和软糖中的花青素总含量低于野生蓝莓粉、饮料和冰棒样品中的总花青素含量。值得注意的是，含有大量总花青素和绿原酸的燕麦棒在总体喜好、进食欲望和消耗量方面与饼干没有显着差异。总之，这项研究表明，使用多次咬/啜随意食用食物的感官评估以及有益化合物的测量，可以有效地确定含野生蓝莓食品临床研究的适当载体。