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Raw ingredients can be assessed on a regular basis to keep watch on batch and source variation and finished products in powder form can undergo a full assessment to measure the properties (e.g. fully flowing, caking, cohesion) that will be experienced by a consumer or user.
Carbohydrates can have a negative influence on the metabolism, and their excess consumption can lead to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. However, they are responsible for the structure and texture of many bakery products.
The lipid profile of a bakery product might be altered by substitution. For example, saturated fats have a large impact on the incidence of cardiovascular disease. However, there are useful alternatives to traditional oils and butters with large amounts of omega 3 and other components that can mitigate these problems.
Agricultural products have the characteristic of being ‘low value added’ when compared with other industrial commodities. As a result, the application of state-of-the-art technology to the agricultural sector has been slow; it is only in relatively recent times that various up-to-date techniques have reached the point of practical implementation.
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Insects such as crickets provide a protein source with a high feed-conversion efficiency rate (an animal's capacity to convert feed into increased body mass). They also require much less water than traditional protein sources such as poultry or cattle. Health benefits of insect consumption include their high antioxidant power and chitinous fibre content, as well as the upside of a higher protein content in whichever food they are added to. The challenge lies in introducing insect protein into the Western diet. This has to begin with ingredient replacement in existing foods, one example of which is bakery products, as these act to familiarise consumers with insect-based food.
This technology has attracted a lot of attention for its versatility and potential application in various production sectors, such as aerospace, electronics, architecture, and medicine but it is becoming more apparent that in the food production sector this technology has the potential to be used to create personalised food products, enabling the creation of food products with specific design characteristics, flavours and colours, geometric structures, textures, and nutritional profiles.
For every piece of chewy candy, there are a few key elements that dictate texture: Soluble solids control the firmness of a certain product. Gums control the “bite” (supple, snappy, or brittle, for example). And fat and air soften the texture in a way that soluble solids alone cannot. Candies like Starburst, for example, seem hard at first but then yield to your bite. It’s the high concentration of soluble solids that makes them hard; incorporating air and fat, meanwhile, makes the texture soft enough to chew.
Adhesion is the force that resists the separation of two bodies in contact. An adhesion test measures the adhesive characteristics of a product by measuring the forces to separate the product from the test surface which it comes into contact with. Adhesiveness ('Stickiness') is most commonly measured with a cylinder probe, which is pressed (application of compression), onto the surface of the sample after which the force to pull the probe off it is measured. The higher the force to separate these surfaces, the more adhesive is the product. The distance the probe needs to be pulled away from the product before the two surfaces are separated will also indicate its viscoelastic behaviour, and depending upon the product, its ‘tailing’ or ‘stringiness’ characteristic.
In general, any texture analysis test that involves the use of a type of blade to perform the test, is performing a cutting or shearing action on the sample. A number of empirical fixtures feature a single blade or a number of blades which cut/shear through the sample, under specified conditions. The maximum force required and/or the work necessary to achieve this (i.e. the area under the curve) is taken as an index of firmness, toughness or fibrousness of the sample. Whilst empirical or imitative, shearing tests are very popular, particularly for the assessment of food texture and in particular the measurement of ‘bite force’.
For a baker or bread manufacturer, each batch of flour has to be evaluated by test baking to ensure that bread is made to a uniformly high quality. One component of this quality control is measurement of the volume of the bread, which can give information relating to the density of the bread crumb and the strength of the gluten in the flour. This volume information can then be used to modify the dough mix used in bread production to produce bread of the appropriate quality. This procedure is important, not only for the inherent qualities of the bread, but to ensure that the selected dough-piece weight produces a loaf of the correct size for the standard tins used in the baking process.
This type of test can measure the fracture and break strength of hard and brittle products (or their flexibility) by bending the sample, usually until a break occurs. If a break does not occur whilst the sample is flexed then a measure of its flexibility can be performed instead – a degree of flexibility can be desirable or a characteristic to be avoided, depending upon the sample. Stable Micro Systems enables a wide range of tests in this field, using fixtures such as the Three Point Bend Rig which are adaptable to many types of sample, and also specialist attachments like the Crisp Fracture Support Rig or the Spaghetti Flexure Rig.
There are generally two types of extrusion test in texture analysis: backward (or back) and forward. Of the various extrusion techniques the one favoured in recent years is back extrusion. The sample is contained in a strong cell with a solid base and an open top. A rod with a disc is then forced down into the container until the food flows up (backwards) through the space between the disc and the container walls which is called the annulus.
The market demand of gluten-free (GF) baked goods and pasta is expanding. Despite the health halo associated with GF food category, commercially available GF cereal-based foods are often characterised by lower nutritional quality than their gluten-containing counterparts, having lower dietary fibre, protein and resistant starch (RS) contents, along with enhanced starch digestion rates and extents.
A tensile test pulls or stretches a sample and as a result the extensibility/elongation and tensile strength properties are measured in terms of force required to stretch and distance something can be stretched to.
The ultimate tensile strength of a material is defined as the maximum attainable load, acting on a specimen in a tensile test, divided by the original cross-sectional area of the specimen.
A conventional tensile test assumes that the sample fractures almost instantaneously in a plane that is approximately perpendicular to the plane of the applied tension. The maximum force is the tensile strength of the material.
A compression test is perhaps the most simple and popular test of instrumental texture measurement. In its simplest method, a sample is placed on a flat base/surface and a flat probe/platen is lowered onto the sample to a given force or distance (or the sample is compressed to a percentage of its original height). The sample is deformed and the extent of the deformation and/or the resistance offered by the sample is recorded. Simple compression tests are often termed uniaxial compression which means that the sample is compressed in one direction and is unrestrained in the other two. Either a low or high degree of compression can be chosen but a high degree of compression will usually cause the product to rupture, spread, fracture, or break into pieces.
In a penetration/puncture test a probe is made to penetrate into the test sample and the force necessary to achieve a certain penetration depth or the depth of penetration in a specified time, under defined conditions, is measured and used as an index of e.g. hardness, firmness, toughness.
Both test principles cause an irreversible change in the sample and assume that the sample being investigated is of larger area than the contact area of the probe in use; a sample smaller than the probe contact area would assume compression principles.
Cooking in oil is widely used in the production of snack foods of various kinds, and results in drastic changes to the structure of the food.
Penetration of oil is particularly important for structure development in products such as potato chips, tortilla chips and potato crisps. In products which become totally hard and crisp, the oil first coats the surface and begins to move into the chip. As the heat builds up inside, moisture turns to steam and exits the chip, leaving a sponge-like network of tunnels which fill with oil.
In the Far East, tofu is the most popular soybean food whilst in the West, tofu is gaining in popularity. 
Purées
are very thick and viscous slurries made from processed vegetables that
are often concentrated and include fibrous material or fruit pieces
that adds structure. 
Processed root and tuber products
Most
vegetables are cooked before consumption, a process that softens their
texture (unless there is a lot of lignification) and gelatinises the
starch deposited as food for the plant. 
From
the point of view of texture, vegetables represent a very diverse group
of products. They can be consumed in many different textural forms.For
instance, cooked asparagus is soft, fibrous and pulpy, cucumber is
crisp, firm and juicy, raw carrots are hard and crisp, and cooked peas
are soft and mealy. The tissue structure in each case determines the
texture as received by the consumer.
For many types of vegetables, consumer acceptance of the product is decisively influenced by the vegetable’s texture, along with other qualities such as colour, smell and taste. Texture is a critical quality attribute to all vegetables, whether it is to assess ripeness or functional performance in their processed forms.
There’s an entire industry dedicated to making foods
crispy. Ever wondered why we are so drawn to the snap of a potato chip
or the crackle of fried chicken – it’s down to biology, psychology and
an incredible amount of engineering.
Crispness is a critical
attribute of quality for crispy products, which can be evaluated through
both instrumental and sensory analysis. Here is a round-up of the type
of research that is going on around the world into this amazing
textural feature.
Is there a best technique to cook vegetables? A study carried out at the University of Brazil about physical and sensory aspects to stimulate their consumption has attempted to answer this.
Consumers are becoming more health-conscious and have less time to prepare meals. They are often confused about which time and cooking method are adequate to preserve nutrients in vegetables. All cooking techniques cause changes in the nutrient content and the taste of a vegetable.
The objective of this study was to determine the best cooking method for different vegetables using sensory evaluation and instrumental analysis of texture and colour. The chosen vegetables for this study were broccoli, carrot and Brazilian zucchini because they are among the most consumed vegetables in Brazil. The cooking methods were boiling, steaming, cooking in the combined oven, microwave, and steaming in the microwave.
HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a virus that
damages the cells in the immune system and weakens a person’s ability to
fight everyday infections and disease.
Environmental concerns have become more important to consumers, leading many companies to design products around sustainability principles. This can be focussed on reducing energy consumption in manufacturing processes, improving recyclability, using waste products or replacing materials with biodegradable alternatives.
Texture Analysis plays an
important role in ensuring standards are maintained in areas such as
material mechanical properties and food texture. A large amount of
research in this area occurs in an academic context; this blog post
contains some examples of Texture Analysis in Research.
The steps
involved in this process will vary depending on the type of printer and
the raw materials involved, but generally they are as follows:
1: A 3D model is created using a modelling package or 3D scanner, saved as a Computer Aided Design (CAD) file
2: The user slices the CAD file and uploads it to the printer
3: The printer reads and creates each 2D slice to form a 3D object
“More than 40 years after the war on cancer was declared, we have spent billions fighting the good fight. The National Cancer Institute has spent some $90 billion on research and treatment during that time.
Texture is the main quality characteristic of meat, affecting price and consumer acceptance.
Tenderness and juiciness are the main textural parameters that affect a consumer’s enjoyment in general.
Tenderness refers to the force needed to yield the meat during chewing, and the energy needed to masticate it to the point of swallowing. Juiciness refers to the type and amount of liquid released during mastication. Some specific meat products have a different textural priority, such as the chewiness exhibited by beef jerky.
A large amount of research has been dedicated to understanding the texture of meat. However, the detailed mechanism of tenderisation is still not fully understood. Tenderness is known to be influenced by properties of the raw material, such as animal breed and age, muscle contraction, amount of connective tissue, ripening and its cooking method.
From the point of view of texture, vegetables represent a very diverse group of products.
We live in a world obsessed by perfection. Everything is supposed to be better if it’s shiny, defect-free and stronger than a Sherman tank.
But be careful what you wish for, because a flawless world wouldn’t work nearly as well. Imperfections are tools, and we would be lost without them.
Of course, flaws are not always convenient.
Imagine bending a long thin object, like a bar of chocolate. If the chocolate has flat surfaces, each side is stretched evenly. It’s hard to break, but if you put a notch in it the section of chocolate just underneath also has to do the job of the bit you’ve taken out. The chocolate will break at the notch. It’s not because it’s thinner at that point but because the sharp point of the notch concentrates the force in a very small area.
In a flawless object the stress you put on a material by pushing, stretching, bending and twisting is relatively evenly spread. Features like notches, voids and tiny cracks make the pattern of stress more complicated, concentrating the stress in some bits and relieving it in others. If you could see stress as colours, every object you pushed on would suddenly light up with bands of colour and the flaws would be tiny pinpoints of dazzlingly bright light. Those pinpoints are vulnerable, overloaded already, they can’t take much more.
s as soon as baking ends, and it becomes detectable to the consumer as early as a few hours after baking. Bread staling presents itself as reduced springiness and reduced crumb softness, both of which can be measured using a firmness measurement with a cylinder probe on a TA.XTplus Texture Analyser.
