Abstract

The low consumption of cocoa products has been a major concern to cocoa producing African countries over the years. In Africa, 3 percent of cocoa is consumed locally while the per capita consumption in Nigeria is only 0.12kg/head/year. This situation results in poor remunerative prices of cocoa beans and discourages production on the part of farmers. Cocoa bread is one of the products from wheat. It contains cocoa powder rich in antioxidants which help to fight heart diseases. It lowers blood pressure and prevents diabetes. The study investigated the perception of consumers of cocoa bread in terms of taste, colour, aroma, texture and packaging. The cocoa bread is produced by Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN) to promote value addition to cocoa. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 80 respondents in CRIN and environs using structured interview schedule. The data were analyzed using percentage, mean and standard deviation (SD). The results showed that 60.0% of the consumers were males. Married people (65.0%) purchased cocoa bread than the unmarried ones. The mean household size of respondents was 3.35?1.59. The data on consumers? perception of CRIN cocoa bread were ranked in order of their weighted mean and standard deviation. The mean colour (7.06?1.18), taste (6.68?1.34), texture (6.23?0.89), and aroma (6.21?1.57) of cocoa bread indicated that colour and taste were ranked high by the respondents. Consumers liked eating cocoa bread because these variables were of interest to them. However, 75.0 percent of the consumers observed that there should be improvement in packaging while 85.0 percent showed low perception level in the consumption of the product. For the bread to maintain good quality, the present acceptance of the colour and taste should be sustained and the bred re-packaged properly.

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