Sensory analysis includes use of the senses of smell, taste, sound and touch.
Evaluation of food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic texture by touch includes the use of thefingers, as well as the lips, tongue, palate and teeth in the mouth.
When producing products for consumers, manufacturers endeavour to offer products with a defined uniformly high quality. As would be expected, sensory methods of analysis are subject to wide variability, are labour intensive and therefore expensive. Alongside sensory tests of products by trained tester panels, instrumental measuring methods are used as flanking measures.
Take gummy mashed potatoes, leathery dried apples, and limp celery. We spurn them all, because their texture – the way they feel on the tongue, lips, hard palate, or teeth – is offputting.
Most people obsess over the flavour of everything from ice cream to chocolate – but the professionals, food scientists and chefs alike, know that crispiness, creaminess and chewiness is just as important. Texture is big business and the science of food structure even has its own 'ology': food rheology.
Texture analysis is the mechanical testing of food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, adhesives and other consumer products in order to measure their physical properties.
It is an important attribute in that it affects processing and handling, influences habits, and affects shelf-life and consumer acceptance of products.
Because of its adaptability, texture analysis has become commonplace in many industries to measure a specific or range of characteristics or properties relating to the way a material behaves, breaks, flows, sticks, bends, etc. Typical texture and physical properties than can be measured include: crispiness, stickiness, brittleness, spreadability, chewiness, firmness and consistency.
Texture refers to those qualities of a food that can be felt with the fingers, tongue, palate, or teeth.
Foods have different textures, such as crisp crackers or potato chips, crunchy celery, hard candy, tender steaks, chewy chocolate chip cookies and sticky toffee, to name but a few.
Texture is also an index of quality. The texture of a food can change as it is stored, for various reasons. If fruits or vegetables lose water during storage, they wilt or lose their turgor pressure, and a crisp apple becomes unacceptable and leathery on the outside.
The spreadability of margarine and butter is of paramount importance for consumer acceptability.
It is a physical property and results from the fact that these products
consist of a dispersion of solid fat crystals in liquid oil.
The
ratio of solid to liquid fat in a product is probably the most
important factor determining hardness and spreadability. However,
hardness and softness are not the only factors influencing
spreadability; smoothness and brittleness are also important.
Fats and oils perform a key role in defining the sensory characteristics of our favourite
prepared foods. They affect the structure, stability, flavour,
shelf-life, palatability, mouthfeel and visual appearance of food
products.
For manufacturers to obtain the desired
performance, it is important to recognise that different applications
require a fat or oil product with different physical and organoleptic
properties.
Customers are wary of manufacturers using taglines to tempt them into buying their product
– a conditioner that states “hair three times suppler after first use”
will not sell well if customers start using it and find no difference to
their tresses.
News travels fast these days with thousands of
cosmetics review sites and online shops, and products that fail to live
up to their claims will be given poor marks. The manufacturers could
have performed a simple bend test on hair specimens treated with their
conditioner and would have found their mistake before it was too late.
The development of methods to measure the effect of cosmetics is driven
by increasing pressure on cosmetic companies to provide solid evidence
to support product claims.
The 2017 exhibition for the Institute of Food Technologists was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from June 25th to 28th, showcasing thousands of developments in the food technology industry.
The show gives a good reflection of the current wants and desires of consumers, and they seem to be asking quite a lot from manufacturers this year. One major area to consider while keeping up with these trends is food texture. The majority of attendees were heavily aware of the importance of texture measurement in R&D as well as its maintenance in quality control; texture is such an important quality of food and beverage products that many manufacturers mention a textural attribute specifically by name on a product’s packaging or even in the name itself.
Variations on ‘Roast Dinner’ are eaten for different occasions all over the world – a roast joint of meat, potatoes, vegetables and gravy, often followed by a stodgy pudding such as an apple pie.
This
is a meal that consumers look forward to so it is important that the
texture of each component is no less than perfect. This analysis would
be carried out for the purpose of calculating ideal cooking times, in
the case of a supermarket or a chain restaurant, or to test the quality
of supplied ingredients.
Texture Analysers are made in the South of England, where afternoon tea stacked high on a triple tiered cake stand is a staple for any big celebration.
Our customers around the world may be surprised to find some items here that aren’t so different from their own national food.
The
first component of afternoon tea is a large, fluffy scone, cut in half
and spread with sticky jam and clotted cream. There are regional
arguments for whether jam or cream should be applied first, but in both
cases cream and jam that are hard and difficult to spread cause the
scone to break up under the knife, which is very undesirable. The
softness of the inside of a scone can be assessed by preparing a cubic
sample, having cut the crusts off, and performing a compression test
with a large cylinder probe. A soft sample will yield under a low force.
A sandwich, a bag of crisps and a can of soda – the lunch eaten by millions of people around the world every day.
They
are not aware of the meticulous testing that has gone into every stage
of their meal, from the packaging down to the wheat flour used to make
their bread. It is no surprise that food manufacturers focus so much of
their effort into tailoring these items so they are a perfect compromise
between cost and quality, to be pleasing to the customer but not
expensive to manufacture.
A satisfying breakfast sets you up for the rest of the day. It is often composed of many different components, each with a different texture, and there are many variations around the world.
An
example of a widely-consumed breakfast is the “continental breakfast”,
comprising of bread, cold meat, cheese, yoghurt, fruit and cereal.
Regarding texture, bread should be resilient (brittleness in bread
suggests staleness), ham and salami should be tender, and breakfast
cheese may be soft.
If you have ever bought a cosmetic product from a make-up stand in a department store, you will have experienced a sales pitch from someone trying to tempt you into buying the product.
You may have noticed that colour and fragrance are mentioned, but these are secondary to texture (and of course efficacy) – “this lipstick is creamy and feels moisturising all day”, “this face cream is thick and velvety”, “this lipgloss won’t make your lips feel sticky”, “this face wash gives you a luxurious lather”.
You will not see this written on the side of cheap cosmetics, whose manufacturers think of texture as a last resort as they do not have the time or funding to carry out the required research.
Today, things are rather different in the food market from the produce that was available a few decades ago.
While
some familiar flavours and textures endure, the market is now defined
by a constant stream of new flavours and textures allowing the food
product development universe to expand in every direction.
Product
development teams are seeing a new landscape of possibilities and
behind this is growing consumer adventurousness. The broadening appetite
for new flavours and textures stems from the exposure consumers now
have to diverse food and drink cultures created by increased mobility,
prosperity and the media-rich world. Younger consumers in particular are
keen to seek out new flavours and textures and represent such an
important target segment in this booming area of food product
development.
Choosing the optimum texture analysis test method to measure your new texture creations
Exciting new food textures will be among the emerging trends over the next three years,
together with more ‘playful’ products for adults and more widespread
use of edible packaging, according to a leading food futurologist.
Successful
chefs have realised that to be at the top of their game they need to
create new culinary experiences using a combination of unusual tastes,
textures and theatrical twists to give the eating experience a new
multi-sensory dimension. This is enabled by a variety of new high-tech
equipment, adjusted traditional preparation techniques and a handful of
clever chemicals. The myriad of gelling ingredients available to
formulate such texturally amazing products is endless which means there
is virtually no limit to the vast variety of food products that can be
configured.
The development of cosmetics for release into a competitive market is a high cost endeavour,
so it would be inefficient for these high stakes products to be shipped
in low quality packaging, or for the container to degrade during its
shelf life.
Packaging is the first thing the customer sees
in the shop so from this point of view the graphics and physical design
are important to make it stand out amongst other similar products; the
appearance of packages can directly affect marketing. However, the main
purpose of packaging is to ensure the product arrives in a customer’s
hands in perfect condition and to prevent any losses caused by shipping,
handling or storage.
Stand-up
flexible pouches are in vogue all over the world and according to
experts are set to experience high growth in the future, too.
There
are many reasons for this. They are attractive to consumers and easy to
handle to transport, for instance. They were very much led by the
squeezable baby fruit sauce packages but now when we observe the retail
food shelves, we see ketchup, mayonnaise, wine, salsa, honey, juice,
premixed cocktails, and a host of fluid food products in stand-up
flexible pouches.
A pair of tights is usually put on with a certain amount of stretching, and fingernails or
jewellery often snags on a single thread that will turn into a run or
“ladder” once the leg is applying stress to the tights.
Additionally,
a ladder may be caused during the working day, such as a snag occurring
when the tights are pushed against the underside of a desk. This can
greatly inconvenience the wearer as it appears unprofessional and they
may not have a spare pair. It can also be expensive.
Cosmetics
companies! Can you say with confidence that a product your customer
buys in bulk today will have the same excellent qualities they expect
from your brand when they open it in six months’ time?
If not, you need to start stability testing, pronto.
Stability
testing is simply the assessment of the lasting power of a cosmetic,
during which samples of it are put under different environmental
conditions for a set time period, and its properties analysed. These
conditions vary in light, temperature, pressure and humidity levels and
are designed to imitate what the product may be subjected to during its
lifetime.
Shellfish
has a characteristically chewy texture; to create a convincing
comminuted product, manufacturers need to imitate this.
In texture analysis terms, chewiness is measured by elasticity. High elasticity produces an item with a rubbery consistency (Figure 7) whereas low elasticity creates an undesirably brittle product.
