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Globally, consumer’s inclination towards functional foods had noticed due to their greater health consciousness coupled with enhanced health-care cost. The fact that probiotics could promote a healthier gut microbiome led projection of probiotic foods as functional foods and had emerged as an important dietary strategy for improved human health. It had established that ice cream was a better carrier for probiotics than fermented milked due to greater stability of probiotics in ice cream matrix. Global demand for ice cream boomed and probiotic ice cream could have been one of the most demanded functional foods. The purpose of this paper was to review the technological aspects and factors affecting probiotic viability and to standardize methodology to produce functional probiotic ice cream.

Attempt was made to search the literature (review and researched papers) to identify diverse factors affecting the probiotic viability and major technological challenge faced during formulation of probiotic ice cream. Keywords used for data searched included dairy-based functional foods, ice cream variants, probiotic ice cream, factors affecting probiotic viability and health benefits of probiotic ice cream.

Retention of probiotic viability at a level of >10⁶ cfu/ml is a prerequisite for functional probiotic ice creams. Functional probiotic ice cream could have been produced with the modification of basic mix and modulating technological parameters during processing and freezing. Functionality can be further enhanced with the inclusion of certain nutraceutical components such as prebiotics, antioxidant, phenolic compounds and dietary fibres. Based upon reviewed literature, suggested method for the manufacture of functional probiotic ice cream involved freezing of a probiotic ice cream mix obtained by blending 10% probiotic fermented milk with 90% non-fermented plain ice cream mix for higher probiotic viability. Probiotic ice cream with functional features, comparable with traditional ice cream in terms of technological and sensory properties could be produced and can crop up as a novel functional food.

Probiotic ice cream with functional features may attract food manufacturers to cater health-conscious consumers.

This study aims to experimentally investigate branded functional beverage (BFB) consumption behaviour post-COVID-19 through the lens of a conceptual framework built on three renowned behaviour modification models and to critically evaluate how well subjective norms serve as a moderator in the consumption behaviour relating to such beverage products.

A conceptual model was developed based on the tenets of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), health belief model (HBM) and value-attitude-behaviour (VAB) model. The study was performed on a convenience sample of 537 respondents aged 18 and up from diverse regions in India using the PLS-SEM method. A total of 444 useable questionnaires were utilized for the final data analysis.

Given the post-pandemic setting, the perceived benefits of BFBs significantly influenced its purchase intention and consumption behaviour. It could grossly impact the media's role (information about COVID-19) and the consumers' interest in healthy food. The study revealed that the information about COVID-19 (role of media) strongly increased interest in healthy food, whereas interest in healthy food positively influenced purchase intention of functional beverages. With interest in healthy food as a “mediator”, the role of media (information about COVID-19) positively influenced purchase intention. It is worth noting the moderating role of subjective norms in the relationship between the role of media (information about COVID-19) and interest in healthy food and that between interest in healthy food and BFB purchase intention.

Food marketers shall skillfully use “opinion” leaders and subject experts in marketing communication campaigns to popularize the link between good food and immunity through COVID-19 and healthy diet-related messages sent via a suitable media platform. This would grab food consumers' interest in BFBs and persuade them to incorporate such items in their daily food milieu. Consumers need to be assured that consuming “functional” products would deliver health benefits and upkeep their body immunity in the post-COVID-19 times.

There has been minimal research on the link between perceived benefits, the role of media, interest in healthy food and consumption behaviour on functional beverages in the post-COVID-19 setting. Moreover, subjective norms have never been probed as a moderator in the consumer behaviour studies on BFBs. This pioneering study applied the tenets of the TPB, HBM and VAB model in the context of post-pandemic functional beverage consumption. The altered study settings caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the context of a developing economy like India have amplified the research value of this study.

The effects of country-of-origin (COO) cues on product evaluations are well documented. However, research on the relative effects of COO compared to other geographical indicators, such as region-of-origin (ROO), on food purchases is still limited. This study investigates how geographical origin labels influence consumers' perceptions of product value and authenticity of foreign food, as well as subsequent purchase intention (PI) and willingness to pay premium prices (WTPPP). The moderating role of health consciousness on these relationships is also examined due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

This study uses a between-subjects experimental design conducted with 300 middle- and high-income Chinese consumers aged between 25 and 50 years. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling.

Whilst under both COO and ROO cues, all five product values positively influenced consumers' WTPPP, only functional, economic and novelty values influenced PI. The ROO cue performed significantly better than the COO cue in eliciting functional, economic and novelty value perceptions, which triggered stronger PI and willingness to pay a premium price. These relationships were mediated by product authenticity (PA) and moderated by consumers' health consciousness (HC).

Because food labels provide salient product information that facilitates consumers' evaluation of products, marketers should assess which product value perceptions they wish to enhance and then choose the appropriate geographical indicators for their labelling strategies.

This study identifies the effects of COO and ROO cues on product values, authenticity, PI and WTPPP. It also provides valuable insights into the role of HC on consumers' purchase decisions, which also aids in understanding the impact of global crises on food purchases.

The purpose of this study is to determine the viability of Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GR-1 (L. rhamnosus GR-1) in five yogurt samples with or without quinoa, chickpea, soybean and rice flour over various fermentation periods and refrigerated storage durations, with a focus on exploring the potential of functional foods, which provide health benefits beyond nutritional value. Additionally, the study aimed to evaluate consumer acceptance of yogurt fortified with functional flour. Using a nine-point hedonic scale, from 1 (dislike extremely) to 9 (like extremely), participants rated appearance, flavour, texture and overall acceptability.

The samples were inoculated with the probiotic strain L. rhamnosus GR-1 and fermented for 0, 2, 4 and 6 h at 38°C, followed by refrigerated storage at 4°C for 1, 15 and 30 days, respectively. Microbial enumeration was performed throughout fermentation and storage to assess the viability of L. rhamnosus GR-1. A sensory evaluation involving 86 participants was conducted to assess the consumer acceptability of the yogurt samples.

Notably, L. rhamnosus GR-1 achieved viable counts of 108 colony-forming units per mL in all treatments at all fermentation time points. Over the 30-day storage period, no statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) in average pH values were observed among the five treatments, and within each treatment, pH levels remained stable, with an overall mean of 4.2 ± 0.64. Treatment 4, which featured rice flour fortification, received higher hedonic scores from sensory panellists in terms of appearance, flavour, texture and overall acceptability. These findings indicate that incorporating functional flours in conjunction with cow’s milk effectively promotes and preserves the viability of L. rhamnosus GR-1 in yogurt.

Exploring the potential of probiotic yogurt enriched with diverse functional flours to enhance nutritional content and health benefits as well as attract new consumers, this study addressed a critical gap in understanding consumer perceptions and generated insights for creating innovative and health-promoting dairy products.

The study proposes an evaluation model that allows quantitative characterization of the effects of service quality on consumer’s satisfaction for online food delivery (OFD) services in a nonlinear manner. As such, the authors endeavor to bridge the research-to-practice gaps whereby the effect magnitudes and nonlinear patterns of service quality have been overlooked in the current literature.

The quantitative Kano method is adopted. A Kano questionnaire was first developed by synthesizing and operationalizing existing evidence on OFD service qualities. The questionnaire solicited consumers’ evaluations of 21 OFD service attributes, and it was distributed to an online panel in Singapore. With 580 valid responses, the functions that quantitatively depict effects of each attribute on consumer’s satisfaction were subsequently derived.

The results reveal that among Singaporean consumers, food quality, reliability of delivery, responsiveness of customer support, ease-of-use of digital interfaces and promotions are pivotal attributes contributing to above-average satisfaction improvement across all performance levels. Meanwhile, delivery riders’ attitudes and real-time tracking functions emerge as substantial contributors to satisfaction at high-performance levels.

The findings provide crucial insights for OFD practitioners in Singapore in resource prioritization and service optimization. This study demonstrated the importance of streamlining customer support services and focusing on the utilitarian aspects of OFD services. Moreover, these results can be employed in advanced service improvement procedures, providing a roadmap for future OFD service enhancements.

This study pioneers the development of a quantitative quality evaluation model in the OFD context. With the established quantitative Kano model, the study addresses the omission of effect magnitudes and nonlinear patterns of service quality. It highlights the transition from a binary “does it affect satisfaction” to a more nuanced “how much does it affect satisfaction” approach, offering a robust understanding of consumer’s satisfaction dynamics.

Food-related innovations might contribute to a qualitative leap in the transition to sustainable food systems. In this article, the authors map the existing literature on food and innovation in order to identify and systematise major research streams and relate them to current discussions on sustainability. The authors rely on a broad definition of innovation covering specific technological innovations as well as social, environmental and system innovations.

The authors analysed the relationship between innovation and food through bibliometric and content analysis, augmented with visualisation based on data (N = 7,987) extracted from the Web of Science. The published volume, research areas and influential journals were investigated using descriptive analyses.

This review categorises the literature on innovation and food into six main clusters, showing that most of the studies are carried out at the macro-level related to the global sustainable food systems. Network visualisation allowed them to distribute recent keywords associated with innovation across the agri-food value chain. Moreover, the authors identified environmental, social and economic pillars of innovation, which not only relate to sustainability but also are associated with open innovation as well as social innovation and eco-innovation.

This bibliometric analysis is amongst the first to examine the holistic knowledge structure surrounding a triple concept of innovation, food and sustainability. In addition, the study identifies research gaps and indicates new research directions, which add further value.

Indigenous knowledge is an essential element for unveiling the evolutionary journey of socio-culture phenomena. One of the key challenges in foresight exercises is to incorporate social-culture issues such as culture, lifestyle and behavior (referred as indigenous knowledge) into the study. However, the statistical trends of those factors tend to be either not available or limited unlike the population or economic related factors. The purpose of this study is to present the use of valuable data from indigenous knowledge to enhance the foresight exercise through the better understanding of social dynamics and changes.

The fragmented form of indigenous knowledge is analyzed and converted into a structured data format and then interpreted to unveil the evolutionary journey of socio-cultural phenomena. This study applies a scenario development method to visualize the results of foresight by comparing before and after the integration of indigenous knowledge. Finally, an assessment was conducted to reflect the value enhancement resulting from the integration of indigenous knowledge into the foresight process.

With the proposed approach, the foresight study on the future development of Thai food was demonstrated. The findings of this study show that the use of indigenous knowledge on eating behavior, cooking style and food flavor helps improve the alternative scenarios for the future development of Thai foods.

Indigenous knowledge can be applied to develop plausible scenarios and future images in foresight exercises. However, by nature, indigenous knowledge is not well-structured and, therefore, needs to be analyzed and turned into structured data so that it can be interpreted before integrating into the foresight process.

This study is one of few studies addressing the opportunities for integrating indigenous knowledge into foresight process. Indigenous knowledge can unveil the evolution of socio-cultural changes to improve the results of foresight study, especially the cases where statistical data and trends may not be sufficient to foresee future development.

Common availability of digital technologies encouraged companies in almost all industries to focus on exploring various ways of benefiting from their adoption and thus taking steps toward their digital transformation. This paper aims to describe the digital transformation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as a challenging opportunity and identify ways in which companies from the food industry address it.

The paper presents empirical evidence based on a case study of the Polish freeze-drying market and companies operating on it. This study adopted a single case study research method to describe the digital transformation journey of SMEs. The sample constitutes a single sectoral case study with more than one unit of analysis – sixteen companies. The undertaken approach follows an embedded case study design and allows for an extensive and multidimensional analysis of rich empirical data.

The results of this analysis allowed to identify four significant trends describing human resources involvement in the digital transformation of freeze-drying companies in Poland (i.e. visionary top-down, cooperative task-oriented, persuasive bottom-up, chaotic), a detailed catalog of outcomes of digital transformation from the perspective of food industry companies grouped in seven categories and a list of main barriers to digital transformation.

This paper contributes to expanding knowledge on the practices of food industry companies in addressing challenges posed by the development of information technology and the dynamically changing environment after the COVID-19 pandemic. It contributes further to the discussion related to context-, industry- and country-specific barriers to digital transformation, identifying time-related constraints as an essential barrier to digital transformation.

The major objective of this research work was to evaluate various physico-chemical characteristics, such as, chemical composition, antioxidant capacity, objective color and texture profile analysis (TPA) of the wheat flour/chickpea flour (CF) blends, so that nutritious baked products could be consumed by the type-2 diabetic persons.

Wholegrain wheat flour (WGF) and white wheat flour (WWF) were substituted with CF at 0 to 40% levels. These wheat flour/CF blends were analyzed for proximate composition, the prepared dough and baked breads were tested for objective color, antioxidant capacity as trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC), malondialdehyde (MDA) and total phenolic content (TPC) and TPA.

WGF had the highest TEAC (117.42 mM/100g) value, followed by WWF (73.98 mM/100g) and CF (60.67 mM/100g). TEAC, MDA and TPC values varied significantly among all the three flour samples.

Inclusion of whole chickpea (without dehulling) flour in such type of blends would be another interesting investigation during the future research studies.

These research findings have a great potential for the production of these baked products for human consumption on an industrial scale.

Production of breads using wheat flour and CF blends would benefits the consumers.

Production of Arabic and pan breads using wheat flour and CF blends would, therefore, combine the benefits of both the needed proteins of plant origin and the health-promoting bioactive compounds, in a most sustainable way for the consumers.

The problem of environmental pollution is becoming increasingly severe, and international consensus confirms the need for eco-friendly consumption. Worldwide, the eco-friendly food market is booming, so understanding consumers’ motivations to purchase these foods is crucial. This paper aimed to construct a model explaining consumers’ intentions to purchase eco-friendly food by combining stimuli-organism-response (SOR) and signalling theories and exploring the mechanisms by which macro- and micro-signals impact perceptions of value and consumers’ subsequent willingness to purchase eco-friendly food.

An online questionnaire was distributed through the Qualtrics platform, and the completed questionnaires were collected in March and April 2023. The study used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to analyse the 331 valid responses received.

The results indicated that trustworthy eco-labels for high-quality and health-promoting products, as conveyed in macro signals, significantly enhanced consumers’ perceptions of functional value. The peer effect and a moderate level of food anthropomorphism conveyed in micro-signals substantially improved their perceptions of social value, whilst the perceived value of products significantly and positively influenced their purchase intentions.

This study explains consumers’ motivations to purchase eco-friendly products. This provides an explanation for the effect of macro- and micro-signals on value perceptions. By integrating the different dimensions of these signals to create a unified research perspective, the paper provides an integrated model, thereby filling a research gap concerning the influence of two-dimensional signals on purchase intention. By supporting eco-friendly food use, the paper contributes to environmental protection and sustainable development.