The influence of flavor release from a solid test food, and its Time Intensity (TI) scoring, on chewing efficiency

Abstract

Studies on relationships between chewing ability (CA) and flavor perception that use different test foods to determine both functions, include three assumptions: (1) inter-subject ratios of any CA measure are invariant to the test food, (2) CA is invariant to the subject’s amount of attention to the food, and (3) the value of CA is invariant to the nature of the flavor released. The present study used chewing efficiency (CE), the number of chewing cycles needed to halve the initial particle size, as a measure of CA with specific inter-subject ratios. The aim was to examine whether CE is affected by perceiving solely the release of flavor during habitual chewing, and by the combination of perceiving the release and its scoring of Time Intensity (TI), with attention to TI anyhow. CE was determined for 12 subjects in three sessions, using Optosil® as an artificial solid model food. Unflavored taste-less Optosil was used in session-1, with habitual chewing. Optosil flavored with 0.3% of the sweetener Neotame was used in session-2, with habitual chewing without TI scoring of flavor release. Flavor was released and TI was scored in session-3. The effect of flavor release and TI scoring on CE was highly significant (p = 0.0008; one-way ANOVA; paired observations). With respect to unflavored Optosil, CE improved 14.0% for habitual chewing on flavored Optosil, and 23.2% for additionally scoring TI of flavor release. Common conditions of test food, flavor and scoring are required for determining unbiased relationships between CE and perceived flavor release.