The oral management of food: the bases of oral success and for understanding the sensations that drive us to eat

Abstract

Everyone understands the verbs—to chew, to smell and to swallow. Most people subconsciously take eating for granted. As consumers, we enjoy eating without much need to understand how we succeed. But we do not all succeed equally, adapting as best we can with the teeth we have managed not to lose. Impaired dentitions lead to changes in food selection, style of cooking and other food preparation. The physiology of mastication is briefly reviewed. This process necessarily involves ingestion past the lips where temperature is monitored. Incision provides extremely sensitive detection of internal texture whilst the lips and tip of tongue detect external texture. Videofluorography (VFG) has provided the essential basis for visualizing and analyzing the processes by which food is moved to the cheek teeth and is subsequently manipulated. Data on the process of crushing food between the teeth explains the release of vapor and the sensation of food texture, which change progressively as the mouthful is chewed. Salivary flow rates and salivary proteins are critical for the developing coherence of the food bolus and its adhesion to the tongue prior to swallowing. The movement of odors from the mouth to the olfactory nerves in the roof of the nasal cavity involves the dynamic combination of tongue movement, continuing respiration and, late in the chewing sequence, the adhesion of the bolus to the moving tongue, which can be seen graphically on VFG. These coordinated interactive processes together provide the basis of oral success.