Vegetables are an important but under consumed part of a healthy diet. There is growing interest in promoting vegetable acceptance and consumption among infants to help establish life-long healthy eating patterns. A recent survey of commercial baby food products in the United States (U.S.) by Moding and colleagues revealed a lack of variety in the types of vegetables offered. Most notably, there were no commercially available single, dark green vegetable products. Instead dark green vegetables were often mixed with fruits or red/orange vegetables (e.g., squash) that provide additional sweetness. In order for liking for vegetables to be learned, the flavors from the vegetables must still be perceptible in the mixture. Thus, the objective of the research reported here was to understand the sensory profiles of vegetable-containing stage 2 infant products commercially available in the U.S. and how ingredient composition affects flavor profiles. We performed descriptive analysis to quantitatively profile the sensory properties of 21 commercial vegetable-containing infant foods and one prepared in our laboratory. Eleven experienced panelists participated in 14.5 h of lexicon generation and training prior to rating all 22 products (in triplicate) for 14 taste, flavor, and texture attributes. Products that contained fruit were not only sweeter than products that did not contain fruit but were also higher in fruit flavors and lower in vegetable flavors. In general, sensory profiles were driven by the first ingredient in the product. Because few products had dark green vegetables as a first ingredient, dark green vegetable flavor was not prevalent in this category. This suggests the sensory profiles of commercially available infant vegetables foods may not be adequate to facilitate increased acceptance of green vegetables.

中文翻译：

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在市售婴儿食品中将深绿色蔬菜与水果混合，使它们尝起来像水果

蔬菜是健康饮食中重要但消费不足的一部分。人们对促进婴儿接受和食用蔬菜以帮助建立终身健康饮食模式越来越感兴趣。Moding 及其同事最近对美国 (US) 的商业婴儿食品进行的一项调查显示，所提供的蔬菜种类缺乏多样性。最值得注意的是，没有市售的单一深绿色蔬菜产品。相反，深绿色蔬菜通常与提供额外甜味的水果或红色/橙色蔬菜（例如南瓜）混合。为了学习对蔬菜的喜好，蔬菜的味道在混合物中仍然必须是可察觉的。因此，此处报告的研究的目的是了解在美国市售的含蔬菜的第 2 阶段婴儿产品的感官特征以及成分组成如何影响风味特征。我们进行了描述性分析，以定量分析 21 种商业含蔬菜婴儿食品和我们实验室制备的一种婴儿食品的感官特性。在对所有 22 种产品（一式三份）的 14 种口味、风味和质地属性进行评级之前，11 名经验丰富的小组成员参加了 14.5 小时的词典生成和培训。含有水果的产品不仅比不含水果的产品更甜，而且水果风味更高，蔬菜风味更低。一般来说，感官特征是由产品中的第一种成分驱动的。由于很少有产品将深绿色蔬菜作为第一成分，因此深绿色蔬菜风味在该类别中并不普遍。这表明市售婴儿蔬菜食品的感官特征可能不足以促进人们对绿色蔬菜的接受度。