Consumer acceptance of visual appearance of broiler breast meat with varying degrees of white striping.

White striping is a condition associated with heavier broiler breast fillets and is observed grossly as white striations seen parallel to the direction of the muscle fibers. The present study was intended to assess the consumer acceptance of broiler fillets with different degrees of white striping condition. High resolution digital images of fillets, representative of varying degrees of white striping, were shown to 75 consumers in a blind study. Individual images were presented using a completely randomized design. There were 4 replicates of individual fillets within each white striping category (normal = NORM, moderate = MOD, and severe = SEV) and one picture of tray pack (3 fillets) for each category. The consumers were asked to express their overall liking for appearance with a 9-point hedonic scale (9 = like extremely; 1 = dislike extremely) and purchase intent using a 5-point scale (5 = definitely would buy; 1 = definitely would not buy). An open-ended comments section was also included. The results showed that NORM fillets had a significantly higher hedonic score (6.9) than the MOD fillets (6.1), which was also significantly higher than the SEV fillets (4.5), indicating that as severity of white striping increased, the consumer acceptance decreased. From the distribution of the responses, 10.7, 22.4, and 56.7% of the consumers disliked the NORM, MOD, and SEV fillets, respectively. Furthermore, the average purchase intent score for the NORM fillets (3.6) was significantly higher than those with 2 degrees of white striping (2.4 and 2.5, respectively), suggesting that the consumers were more likely to buy NORM fillets. Over 50% of the consumers indicated that they would probably not or definitely not buy MOD or SEV fillets. The correspondence analysis of open-ended comments revealed the major reasons for the dislike of the white-striped meat was that the fillets had a more fatty or marbled appearance. The results of the study suggest that the white striping does affect the consumer acceptance based on the appearance of the fillets.