| Resumo: |
Previous work has established the technical feasibility of producing acceptable shark-base fish biscuits, which were subsequently used for a school breakfast programme in the poorer areas of Ecuador. However, reformulation of the biscuits using chaeper pelagic fish resources (sardine, mackerel and tuna dark meat) was necessary due to changes in the cost and availability of shark. This paper describes a datailed examination of the organoleptic quality of the pelagic-fish based biscuits, and the results of acceptability test undertaken with children attending 3 schools in the marginal areas of Guayaquil. For the first part, 5 panelists selected from staff at Instituto Nacional de Pesca, rated each of the 3 types of biscuit using 5 rating scale describing texture, colour, rancidity, fish-flavour and hedonic rating. For the second part, a pilot study with 120 children was undertaken. A further 292 children received biscuits in a main study. The children were aged between 4 and 14 years. Each child received one type of biscuit and indicated whether or not they liked it. Acceptability rates were calculated as the percentage of children indicating a liking for the biscuits. The taste panel results indicated that there were only slight differences between the sardine and mackerel biscuits. Both were softer, of a lighter colour, had a weaker fish flavour and were rated a being less racing than the tuna biscuits, which were liked the least by the taste panel. The overall acceptability indicated by the shcool children was high, ranging from 75% (tuna) to 97% (sardine) in the pilot test, and 73% (mackerel) to 86% (tuna) in the main study. A commercial non-fish biscuit tested at the same time was liked by 100% of the children. There was some evince to suggest that older children were more discriminating, indicating a stronger dislike for the tuna biscuit in the pilot study than the younger respondents.
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