Mechanical properties of foods responsible for resisting food breakdown in the human mouth

The fragmentation of foods (breakage function) was measured in five humans on ‘bagged’ single particles of 28 foods from three food groups. The change in the square root of the specific surface of the particles (the specific surface being the area of particle silhouettes, measured by image analysis, divided by original particle volume) produced by one bite, averaged for all participants, was inversely linearly related to the square root of the toughness of the foods divided by the square root of their Youngʹs moduli (r = −0.86; p < 0.00001). This relation is predicted by an analysis based on food fragmentation within a limited jaw displacement. Thus, resistance to jaw movement appears to provide sensory information on the deformation, fracture and fragmentation of foods. It is believed that this is the first time that a relation between the breakage of food particles by the teeth and their material properties has been found, and the finding has considerable implications for human masticatory studies, for the analysis of dentition and diet in mammals and for texture studies in food science.