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 consumers. This notion is embodied in the frequently cited denition of food quality as “the combination of attributes or characteristics of a product that have signicance in determining the degree of acceptability of the product to a user.” Another denition 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.
