Application of the Temporal Dominance of Sensations for the Identification of Adulterated Mexican Honey: Comparison and Validation Against Static Sensory Techniques Check All That Apply and Rate All That Apply

The objective of this study was to apply the Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) technique to the analysis of adulterated honey and to validate it by comparing its results with those obtained using the static sensory techniques Check All That Apply (CATA) and Rate All That Apply (RATA). Honey samples adulterated with 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) were evaluated and compared with the original honey sample by three consumer panels (n = 300) using TDS, CATA, and RATA. Discriminant analysis was performed to evaluate sample discrimination, classification accuracy, and correlations among sensory techniques. The TDS curves revealed that the dominant attributes were honey, sugar, syrup, and sweep. The original sample was characterized by the dominance of the honey flavor attribute, whereas the adulterated samples exhibited competition among the sugar, syrup, and sweet attributes as the level of adulteration increased. This finding was confirmed by the TDS parameters Vmax and Tmax, which showed that higher levels of adulteration facilitated consumer identification of these sensory attributes. According to the λ test, the TDS and CATA techniques showed significant differences in all attributes (100% discrimination effectiveness), whereas the RATA technique achieved only 62.5% discrimination. However, the confidence ellipses showed lower dispersion for the TDS data, indicating that all honey samples were differentiated, whereas the confidence ellipses generated using the CATA and RATA techniques indicated that at least one pair of samples was classified as similar. These results were confirmed by the percentages of correct classification, with the TDS technique achieving correct classification rates between 69.77% and 85.38%, whereas those obtained with CATA and RATA ranged from 39.18% to 69.09% and from 6.36% to 63.64%, respectively. The Rv coefficients indicated good agreement between TDS and the static sensory techniques (Rv TDS-CATA = 0.70 and Rv TDS-RATA = 0.82). The TDS technique, together with the Vmax and Tmax parameters, represents a viable approach for identifying adulterated honey and monitoring its dynamic sensory changes during real-time consumption.