New Approach to Food Difficulty Perception: Food Structure, Food Oral Processing and Individual's Physical Strength

Abstract

AbstractThis study aims to study the effect of the interaction between food physics and human physical strengths on food oral processing and difficulty perception in the young population. As the first step in human nutrition is the food oral processing, special emphasis has been given to the oral strengths. Fracture mechanics of fifteen commonly consumed food products of fruits, vegetables and dairy origin were analysed using penetration test. Among the different products studied, six products (carrot, banana, mozzarella, potato, soft cheddar and hard cheddar) were selected and given to 11 young participants (<25 y.o.). Individual physical assessments included measurements of dominant hand grip force, isometric tongue pressure and bite force. Participants ranked the food products in the order of difficulty perceived using a visual analogue scale. Additionally, the number of chews and the time at swallow were analysed from video‐recording for each participant. Food score difficulty showed that high break force of food products were related linearly with difficulty perceived (r = 0.729) and with higher oral processing time (r = 0.816). Other food breakdown characteristics such as number of peaks and gradient of the penetration curves showed linear correlation with mastication time (r = 0.830, r = 0.840) and number of chew cycles (r = 0.903, r = 0.914). However, no relationship could be established between individual physical forces (hand and oral) and food perception difficulty for young participants interviewed. This might be attributed to the selected healthy and young population having higher hand force/tongue force ratio, which might not interfere with their eating process.Practical ApplicationsThis study investigates the relationship between human physical strength (with special emphasis into oral forces), food difficulty perception of food of different textural properties and their chewing and swallowing behavior. The main hypothesis of this work is that healthy young population with different levels of oral strengths and eating behavior will perceive food difficulty as a function of food textural characteristics and their individual capability of eating. To do that, eating capability measurements has been combined with texture analysis and video‐recording of individual eating process (first bite‐to‐swallowing event). Understanding the interplay of physical, physiological and psychological elements of oral processing is a relative new area of research. Thus, the combination of tools and insights generated in this article could be a bridge between oral physiology and food science, and also could be of interests to new product developers in designing food with just‐right texture.