From greasiness to creaminess: multiscale mechanisms, structuring strategies, and AI‑assisted evaluation

Creaminess and greasiness are key fat-related mouthfeel attributes that contribute to food palatability, yet neither can be predicted reliably from a single variable such as fat content, apparent viscosity, oil droplet size, or friction coefficient. Based on a comprehensive review of prior studies, this review integrates evidence across perception mechanisms, structural modulation, and evaluation methods to clarify how creaminess and greasiness arise. By synthesizing evidence from food microstructure, oral processing, rheology, tribology, saliva-food interactions, and consumer responses, this review examines creaminess and greasiness as temporally evolving sensory perceptions shaped during oral processing. The review also discusses fat-reduction and structuring strategies, with attention to their practical limitations. For evaluation, this review highlights the need for a multimodal strategy combining trained descriptive sensory analysis, temporal sensory methods, consumer acceptance tools, rheology, tribology, and oral-residue measurements. Finally, the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to support data integration and sensory prediction is further discussed, while recognizing the need for data quality control, interpretability, and external validation. By integrating mechanistic studies, structural modulation strategies, sensory evaluation methods, and AI-assisted analytical approaches, this review provides an evidence-based perspective to support the development of lower-fat foods with desirable fat-related mouthfeel.