Characterisation of Patterns of Chewing Behaviour in Human Subjects and Their Influence on Texture Perception

Abstract

Electromyography was used as a noninvasive and unobtrusive technique to characterise chewing patterns for a range of foods. Differences between subjects for a variety of aspects of chewing sequence are recorded for a range of foods (carrot, apple, roast pork, salami, biscuit and toast). Identifiable subgroups of subjects differing in chewing behaviour existed within the random sample of 52 dentate subjects. The five subgroups accounted for 52%, 21%, 11%, 10% and 6% of the sample population. Major discriminating factors between the behavioural groups lie in their chewing time and the muscle work rate during chewing. Sensory ratings for firmness and rubberiness of model foods differed significantly between the subjects exhibiting different chewing behaviours. Chewing behaviour may influence consumers’ perceptions about the texture of a food.

Mastication efforts on block and finely cut foods studied by electromyography

“…Large inter-subject variation was reported in EMG variables (Brown et al, 1994;Kemsley et al, 2003;Kohyama et al, 2002b), however relative EMG values for different food samples were similar for each subject (Kohyama et al, 2002a(Kohyama et al, , 2002b(Kohyama et al, , 2005a(Kohyama et al, , 2005b(Kohyama et al, , 2005d. Although elderly people usually exhibited greater differences in EMG variables, and average values were lower in EMG voltages and longer in masticatory time than young subjects, relative EMG variables obtained from different foods were common for young and elderly (Kohyama et al, 2002b).…”

“…The subjects also required longer mastication time and greater muscle activity with larger mouthfuls of food (Diaz-Tay, Jayasinghe, Lucas, McCallum, & Jones, 1991;Miyawaki, Ohkochi, Kawakami, & Sugimura, 2001;Schieppati, Di Francesco, & Nardone, 1989). Either a fixed weight or volume has been used in mastication studies as a mouthful amount (Brown, Langley, Martin, & MacFie, 1994;Brown et al, 1998;Dan, Okuhara, & Kohyama, 2003;Dan, Watanabe, Dan, & Kohyama, 2004;Diaz-Tay et al, 1991;González et al, 2001;Kemsley et al, 2003;Kohyama, 2003aKohyama, , 2003bKohyama, Sakai, & Azuma, 2001;Kohyama et al, 2002a, Kohyama, Mioche, & Martin, 2002bKohyama, Sasaki, Hayakawa, & Hatakeyama, 2004;Kohyama et al, 2005aKohyama et al, , 2005bKohyama et al, 2005d;Miyawaki, Ohkochi, Kawakami, & Sugimura, 2000Schieppati et al, 1989). In this study, we compared the mastication effort of block-cut and finely cut foods with the same weight and volume using the EMG technique.…”

“…Tough meat such as steak and roast beef is another example of difficult food to consume for the elderly (Demers et al, 1996;Ikebe et al, 2002;Millwood & Heath, 2000). Brown et al (1994Brown et al ( , 1998 reported great chewing efforts for raw carrot and meat (beef and pork) using EMG measurement. In our previous study, beef with high fracture stress and high fracture strain produced the highest EMG activity and longest masticatory time among six foodstuffs (Kohyama et al, 2002b).…”

Physics of food structure breakdown and bolus formation during oral processing of hard and soft solids

“…Brown et al [51] highlight four different groupings in chewing behaviour, and differences in such aspects as oral processing time are being shown to affect texture perception [52,53].…”

Talking while Chewing: Speaker Response to Natural Perturbation of Speech

“…Whether or not this normality is the result of a single consistent compensatory strategy or multiple similarly effective strategies is difficult to say with the current data. Based on the classification of chewing behaviour into several distinct types by Brown et al [1994a], it is likely that speakers' chewing strategies interact in a consistent manner with their speech production. In the majority of cases in this study, absolute acoustic goals were not met but the With-Bolus condition exhibited a normal distribution.…”