Journal of texture studies最新文献

Mastication leads to an immediate enhancement in cognitive functions, including inhibitory control. Furthermore, the hardness of the food increases sympathetic nerve activity during and immediately after mastication. Hence, the cognitive function could be enhanced by increased sympathetic nerve activity. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of food hardness on cognitive inhibitory control function in humans. The participants were 23 healthy adults (19–22 years old). Experiments were conducted with two types of gummies (soft and hard). The participants ingested 13 g of gummies and performed a stop-signal task to measure cognitive inhibitory control function after they rested for 5 min. The reaction time for the stop-signal task after gummy consumption was significantly shorter in the hard gummy condition compared to the soft gummy condition (p < .05). Furthermore, the accuracy rate of the responses was also significantly higher in the hard gummy condition compared to the soft gummy condition (p < .05). The results of the present study suggest that food hardness enhances cognitive inhibitory control function in humans.

This study explores the use of food texture terms by adults in the northeastern United States. The purpose of the study was to compare the effect of food texture on food liking and texture term usage among age groups via two complementary online surveys that differed in the specific task given to participants. Survey 1 gathered common food items associated with 25 texture terms using open-ended questions from 345 participants (45% men, 55% women; age range = 20–79 years); it also collected liking scores for foods with these textures. Next, a new group of participants (n = 349, 46% men, 54% women; age range = 20–79 years) completed Survey 2, which asked them to match up to three texture terms to 32 different foods drawn from Survey 1, using a provided list of 35 texture terms. “Tough,” “Chalky,” and “Rubbery” had a negative impact on food liking scores while “Tender,” “Juicy,” and “Crispy” were associated with higher mean food liking scores. “Soft,” “Crunchy,” “Crispy,” “Juicy,” and “Greasy” were commonly used texture terms regardless of age. Within those aged 50–79 years, “Smooth,” “Tender,” “Crunchy,” “Soft,” “Moist,” “Crispy,” and “Creamy” were used more often while “Chalky,” “Rough,” “Mealy,” “Foamy/Airy,” “Gritty” were used less often. Our results identified commonly used texture terms and revealed differential usage in older and younger adults. These data deepen our understanding of the texture of foods in the modern food environment, highlighting how texture perception may vary with age.

Crispness is a textural characteristic that influences consumer choices, requiring a comprehensive understanding for product customization. Previous studies employing neural networks focused on acquiring audio through mechanical crushing of crispy samples. This research investigates the representation of crispy sound in time intervals and frequency domains, identifying key parameters to distinguish different foods. Two machine learning architectures, multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and residual neural network (ResNet), were used to analyze mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) and discrete Fourier transform (DFT) data, respectively. The models achieved over 95% accuracy “in-sample” successfully classifying fried chicken, potato chips, and toast using randomly extracted audio from ASMR videos. The MLP (MFCC) model demonstrated superior robustness compared to ResNet and predicted external inputs, such as freshly toasted bread acquired by a microphone or ASMR audio of toast in milk. In contrast, the ResNet model proved to be more responsive to variations in DFT spectrum and unable to predict the similarity of external audio sources, making it useful for classifying pretrained “in-samples”. These findings are useful for classifying crispness among individual food sources. Additionally, the study explores the promising utilization of ASMR audio from Internet platforms to pretrain artificial neural network models, expanding the dataset for investigating the texture of crispy foods.

Swallowing disorders, or dysphagia, affect a large part of the population due to factors such as degenerative diseases, medication side effects or simply age-related impairment of physiological oropharyngeal function. The management of dysphagia is mainly handles through texture-modified foods of progressively softer, smoother, moister textures, depending on the severity of the disorder. Rheological and physiological-related properties of boluses were determined for a group of five older persons (average age, 74) for a set of texture-modified foods: bread, cheese and tomato and the combination into a sandwich. The softest class was gel food, after which came a smooth timbale; both were compared to boluses of regular food. The subjects chewed until ready to swallow, at which point the bolus was expectorated and measured regarding saliva content, linear viscoelasticity and shear viscosity. The results were compared to those of a previously studied younger group (average age, 38). The general physiological status of the subjects was determined by hand and tongue strength, diadochokinesis and one-legged standing and showed that all subjects were as healthy and fit as the younger group. Age-related properties such as one-legged standing with closed eyes and salivary flow plus bolus saliva content were lower for the older group, but the average chews-until-swallow was surprisingly also lower. Consequently, bolus modulus and viscosity were higher than for the younger group. Overall, the intended texture modification was reflected in bolus rheological and physiological-related properties. Bolus modulus, viscosity, saliva content and chews-until-swallowed all decreased from regular food to timbale food to gel food.

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of processing on the quality, protein oxidation, and structural properties of yak meat. The cooking loss, Warner–Bratzler shear force, meat color, texture, thiobarbituric acid reactive substance, total carbonyl content (TCC), total sulfhydryl content (TSC), and structural properties of yak meat under frying, drying, and boiling were measured. The results showed that the cooking loss rate, shear force, L* value, hardness, elasticity, and chewiness of yak meat increased (p < .05) and the a* value decreased (p < .05) with increasing central temperature after processing. Fried yak meat at 80°C had the lowest cooking loss rate of 42.21% and the lowest shear force of 50.86 N, which had better textural characteristics, followed by boiling, while the maximum cooking loss rate, hardness, and shear force were 1.40 times, 1.26 times, and 1.2 times that of frying, respectively. The thiobarbituric acid reactive substance was obtained after decoction and peaked at 1.88 ± 0.04 mmol/mg at 60°C. The highest TCC and the lowest TSC were obtained for dried proteins at 80°C. In addition, as the central temperature increased, the helical structure in the protein secondary structure decreased, the disordered structure increased, the fluorescence intensity of myofibrillar proteins decreased, and protein degradation occurred. It was concluded that dried yak meat had the highest protein oxidation and the worst quality, while fried yak meat had the lowest protein oxidation and the best quality.

The aim of this study was to compare the investigations of various contents of egg white protein (2.0%–8.0%, EWP), microbial transglutaminase (0.1%–0.4%, MTGase), and konjac glucomannan (0.5%–2.0%, KGM) on the gelling properties and rheological behavior of Trachypenaeus Curvirostris shrimp surimi gel (SSG), and assessed the modification mechanisms through the analysis of structure characteristics. The findings suggested that all modified SSG samples (expect SSG-KGM_2.0%) had the higher gelling properties and the denser network structure than those of unmodified SSG. Meanwhile, EWP could give SSG a better appearance than MTGase and KGM. Rheological results showed that SSG-EWP_6% and SSG-KGM_1.0% had the highest G′ and G″, demonstrating that the formation of higher levels of elasticity and hardness. All modifications could increase gelation rates of SSG along with the reduction of G″ during the degeneration of protein. According to the FTIR results, three modification methods changed SSG protein conformation with the increasing α-helix and β-sheet contents and the decreasing of random coil content. LF-NMR results indicated that more free water could be transformed into immobilized water in the modified SSG gels, which contributed to improve the gelling properties. Furthermore, molecular forces showed that EWP and KGM could further increase the hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interaction in SSG gels, while MTGase could induce the formation of more disulfide bonds. Thus, compared with another two modifications, EWP modified SSG gels showed the highest gelling properties.

The viscoelastic properties of food materials will change significantly while drying is in progress, which greatly influences the food deformation caused by drying. This study aims to predict the viscoelastic mechanical behavior of Hami melon during drying using the fractional derivative model. To characterize the relaxation characteristics, based on the finite difference method, an improved Grünwald–Letnikov fractional stress relaxation model is proposed to derive an approximate discrete numerical solution of the relaxation modulus by applying the time fractional calculus. The Laplace transform method is used to verify the obtained results, and the equivalence of the two methods is proved. In addition, the stress relaxation tests prove that the fractional derivative model has a better prediction effect on the stress relaxation behavior of viscoelastic food than classical Zener model. The significant correlations between the fractional order and the stiffness coefficient and the moisture content is also studied. Which is negative correlation and positive correlation respectively.

Food texture is a collective term for all texture-related features of a food product. A comprehensive description of food texture is therefore practically challenging due to too many parameters that are associated simultaneously with the food. Using every day, non-technical (layman's) language, we attempt in this work to rationalize the different dimensions that contribute to the texture of foods, and we explain the rheological reasons behind the concept. For solid foods, three dimensions are identified being the “hard–soft,” “strong–weak,” and “brittle–plastic.” For liquid foods, three further dimensions are suggested, being “elastic–viscous,” “thick–thin,” and “shear thinning–shear thickening.” As these dimensions are bipolar, for foods where any of the dimensions are not relevant, we conceive that dimension takes on a zero value, aligning at the center of the scale.

For cookie batters, there is a strong interaction between ingredient formulation and processing. Changing the amounts and types of sugar and fat in a recipe to change taste or healthiness influences the type of product formation in a production plant. In this study, the applicability of three measurement methods, a rheometer, a forward extrusion cell, and the Foodtexture Puff Device (FPD), was evaluated to measure the extrudability of cookie batters. When looking at the sugar and fat content, both the rheometer and the FPD proved to be consistent and reliable methods to describe the impact of those ingredients on extrudability. A further optimization of the measurement settings of the FPD may improve the performance of this new method. Although the forward extrusion cell performed well for recipes with an increasing sugar content, it did not yield proper results for recipes with a higher fat content due to a separating fat layer. This also limited the applicability of the forward extrusion cell for different fat types, while the other two methods performed well in that case. The small differences in consistency due to different sugar grain sizes were properly described by the forward extrusion cell and the FPD. Overall, it can be concluded that the rheometer performed best to analyze the extrudability of cookie batters, closely followed by the FPD, of which the measurement settings can be optimized. These methods can also be used in the product development phase.