Application of electromyography (EMG) in food texture evaluation of different Indian sweets

Abstract

The present study was undertaken to correlate surface electromyography variables acquired during chewing of different Indian sweets with the instrumental texture parameters and their sensory attributes. Firstly, a comparison of acquired absolute EMG variables with the relative EMG variables was conducted. The results revealed that the relative EMG mastication parameters can effectively distinguish different textured food products by eliminating the subject variance. Then, the two different recordings of masticatory parameters in an EMG session for human subjects were correlated to investigate the reproducibility of chewing patterns. The correlation coefficients were found to be statistically significant (p less than 0.05) indicating highly reproducible chewing behaviour within a session for human subjects. Finally, acquired surface EMG variables were clustered into six representative variables using dendrograms. The principal component analysis conducted for these representative variables could explain 76% of cumulative proportion of variance. The scores of first principal component correlated significantly with instrumental and sensory hardness and sensory stickiness, while scores of second component correlated with sensory stickiness.