The demand for sustainable and healthy food is increasing. Therefore, it is necessary to find new sources of functional ingredients for design of novel food products. Microalgae are reliable sources of functional ingredients, ready for exploitation with purpose of production of human food. This work explores consumers’ acceptance of novel foods based on microalgae. To achieve natural and realistic eating location, sensory analysis was conducted in a real restaurant in Universitat Politècnica de València. A check-all-that-apply questionnaire and hedonic scale registered the consumers’ expectations (N = 85), perceptions and acceptance, before and after taste of typical Valencian breadsticks. Food neophobia can affect acceptability of novel foods, thus, participants completed a test designed to measure their attitudes towards new food. Microalgae breadsticks have distinctive characteristics compared to control breadsticks, such as colour, flavour and odour, because of microalgae presence. Still, those breadsticks were as acceptable as the control breadsticks according to the consumer preferences. Consumers expected more differences amongst both breadsticks before tasting, but they lowered the differences in perception after trying them. Consumers consider that the product is healthier, and they would understand if it had greater expense. We believe this information can be useful for selling / marketing this novel product.

对可持续和健康食品的需求正在增加。因此，有必要寻找用于设计新颖食品的功能成分的新来源。微藻是功能成分的可靠来源，可随时用于人类食品的生产。这项工作探索了消费者对基于微藻类的新食品的接受程度。为了达到自然和真实的用餐位置，在瓦伦西亚大学理工学院的一家真实餐厅中进行了感官分析。一项适用于所有对象的问卷和享乐主义量表记录了消费者的期望（N = 85），在典型的巴伦西亚面包棒品尝前后的感知和接受度。食物新恐惧症会影响新食物的可接受性，因此，参与者完成了一项旨在衡量他们对新食物的态度的测试。由于存在微藻，因此与对照面包棒相比，微藻面包棒具有鲜明的特征，例如颜色，风味和气味。但是，根据消费者的喜好，那些面包棒与对照面包棒一样可以接受。消费者期望在品尝之前两种面包之间会有更多差异，但是在尝试之后，他们降低了感知上的差异。消费者认为该产品更健康，他们会了解该产品是否有更大的花费。我们认为，这些信息对于销售/营销这种新颖产品很有用。