Consumers’ expectations and acceptability for low saturated fat “salami”: healthiness or taste?

BACKGROUND: Nutritional properties of meat and meat products are becoming very important in purchasing behaviour,because consumers are even more concerned about healthiness. The present study aimed to examine the influence of healthinformation on the expected and informed acceptability of salami. Traditional salami and two lowsaturated fat salami producewith partial or total substitution of pork backfat with extra virgin oil were evaluated. RESULTS: Perceived acceptability was the lowest in salami with total animal fat substitution. In both low saturated fat salami,expected acceptabilitywas significantly higher than perceived acceptability, while in traditional salami itwas lower. ConsumerS completely assimilated their liking in the direction of expectations for salami with partial animal fat substitution, whereas incomplete assimilation was observed for salami with total animal fat substitution. The results also revealed that some sociodemographic characteristics discriminate consumer clusters fromeach other. CONCLUSION: The present study highlights that nutritional information is not enough to satisfy consumers’ expectations if the product is not sensorily acceptable. Findings about the relevance of information and consumers’ segmentation could have important implications for policymakers and themeat product industry.