ABSTRACT
The term “food quality” has a variety of meanings to professionals in the food industry, but the ultimate arbiters of food quality must be the consumers. This notion is embodied in the frequently cited de< nition of food quality as “the combination of attributes or characteristics of a product that have signi< cance in determining the degree of acceptability of the product to a user.” Another de< nition of food quality is “the acceptance of the perceived characteristics of a product by consumers who are regular users of the product category or those who comprise the market segment.” The phrase “perceived characteristics” includes the perception of the food’s safety, convenience, cost, value, and so on, and not just its sensory attributes (Cardello, 1998).
