Millbio and Thimus assess consumer responses to functional bread

Millbio and Italian consumer neuroscience specialist Thimus have examined how people respond to functional bread, combining measurements of electrical brain activity with conventional sensory questionnaires. The research compares bread made using Millbio’s Panvivo GLP1ve ingredient concentrate with a supermarket healthy-choice product and investigates how nutritional messaging can influence expectations of the eating experience.

The work forms part of Millbio’s development of bakery ingredients combining sprouted grains, pulse flours, protein and fibre. Its Panvivo GLP1ve concentrate is intended to support the production of nutritionally enhanced bread, with applications extending to other bakery formats. The company is positioning the product within a market paying greater attention to nutritional density and changing eating habits associated with GLP-1 weight-management medicines.

The concentrate contains sprouted buckwheat, sprouted red lentil grits, wheat gluten, sourdough, pea and chickpea flours, inulin and other functional ingredients. These materials contribute different properties during dough development and baking. Wheat gluten can influence the structure formed during mixing, while pulse flours and sprouted grains affect the composition and sensory characteristics of the finished product.

Millbio’s formulation guidance illustrates how the concentrate can be incorporated into conventional baking processes rather than replacing every ingredient in the recipe. Its published traditional loaf formulation combines the concentrate with wheat flour, water, yeast and salt, using controlled mixing, resting, proving and baking stages. The technical data specify a recommended concentrate dosage of 30% of the total recipe, making formulation balance an important part of its application.

Increasing the proportion of alternative grains and pulse ingredients can affect dough handling and the eating characteristics of bread. Differences in particle size, water absorption and protein composition may change the way a dough develops during mixing, while ingredient flavour and texture can remain evident after baking. The resulting formulation must meet its nutritional objectives without introducing characteristics that consumers find unacceptable.

Thimus has contributed sensory neuroscience methods to the assessment. Its T-Box system uses an electroencephalography headset to record electrical activity from the scalp while participants experience food. The recordings are analysed alongside questionnaire responses, giving researchers two different forms of evidence about how consumers encounter and evaluate a product.

Traditional sensory questionnaires allow participants to report whether they enjoy a product and describe attributes including flavour, texture and aftertaste. Such assessments remain useful because they capture directly expressed preferences and can identify characteristics that require adjustment. Their results may nevertheless be influenced by the participant’s expectations, ability to describe sensations and willingness to express a preference.

EEG provides a separate set of measurements based on electrical signals recorded during the experience. Thimus uses analytical models to derive indicators associated with responses such as liking, emotional engagement and familiarity. These are interpretations of recorded patterns, not direct measurements of an individual’s thoughts or proof that a person will purchase the product.

The companies report that bread containing Panvivo GLP1ve produced a stronger initial sensory response than the supermarket benchmark in the tests conducted. Alessandro Boggiani, cofounder, president and chief executive of Millbio, said women and Generation X consumers responded particularly positively at the sensory level. The research also identified product characteristics that the company intends to refine without substantially changing the overall formulation.

Those findings concern the comparison between two bread products. The available public material does not establish the number of participants, the detailed statistical results or the complete conditions under which the comparison was made. The reported outcome therefore describes the companies’ research findings rather than an independently demonstrated preference across the wider population of bread consumers.

Functional messaging introduced another variable. Millbio reported that some participants approached the nutritional description with lower expectations of taste, while Generation Z consumers were more receptive to the functional positioning. The pattern suggests that the information presented before tasting can influence the context in which the food is experienced, although the strength and consistency of that effect require examination across different products and participant groups.

Thimus has also described a bread-label study comparing responses to the same product when presented with neutral and functional descriptions. Its published findings indicate that functional messaging produced stronger implicit likeability indicators, while participants’ stated questionnaire preferences favoured the neutral label. The company identifies particularly positive implicit responses among women and Generation Z participants.

The label comparison must be distinguished from the comparison between the Panvivo formulation and a supermarket product. Presenting one food with different descriptions is intended to isolate the influence of the information, while testing two different formulations can reveal responses arising from the products’ actual sensory characteristics. The public descriptions do not establish whether the exercises used the same participants or formed separate parts of one research programme.

These distinctions influence how the findings could be used in product development. Where a bread formulation receives relatively weak sensory responses, further ingredient or process changes may be needed. Where a formulation performs well during tasting but its description creates unfavourable expectations, the development decision may concern packaging and communication rather than the underlying recipe.

Any formulation change would still require technical validation during manufacture. Adjusting pulse flour proportions, water content or fermentation conditions can alter dough consistency, processing behaviour and finished texture. The response to those changes depends on the complete recipe and the equipment used, while consumer testing must establish whether the resulting product remains acceptable after the technical adjustment.

Nutritional positioning also requires separate substantiation. A product marketed for consumers interested in protein, fibre or changing eating habits must meet the applicable rules for its declared composition and claims. The GLP1ve name and its association with the GLP-1 market do not establish that eating the bread has the therapeutic effects of a GLP-1 medicine or produces independently verified clinical outcomes.

Mario Ubiali, founder and chief executive of Thimus, has described the value of considering both the eating experience and the information surrounding it. The company’s research approach seeks to establish where implicit indicators and stated preferences differ, allowing product developers to investigate the reasons for an unexpected response rather than relying on a single overall liking score.

Whether those measurements improve commercial decisions will depend on their relationship with subsequent behaviour. A favourable EEG-derived indicator does not necessarily establish that a consumer will buy a loaf, pay a particular price or return to purchase it again. Stronger validation would require representative samples, clearly documented analytical methods and comparisons with actual purchasing or repeat-consumption outcomes.

The reported Millbio and Thimus findings provide preliminary information about how functional bread formulations and nutritional descriptions are received by different consumer groups. Further published methodological detail and commercial testing will be required to determine how reliably the measures can guide production and product-positioning decisions. The immediate result is an additional source of sensory evidence, rather than a verified prediction of sales performance.