APPLICATION OF ENGINEERING TECHNIQUES TO EVALUATION OF TEXTURE OF SOLID FOOD MATERIALS

An engineering approach to evaluation of mechanical attributes of texture in solid food materials is presented. The usefulness of such an approach, which is based on sound physical principles, is discussed. An illustrated list of mechanical tests applicable to solid food materials is given along with formulas for computing the mechanical properties which should be related to mechanical attributes of texture. Examples of previous work which have employed these techniques with the intention of correlating the results with some textural parameters of solid foods are reviewed. It is shown that these objective physical measurements have proven to be useful and give more fundamental data than most of the conventional, poorly defined tests employed in the past. The use of these techniques, where applicable, for future studies is recommended.