Texture is the final frontier of food science

More than ever, products must feel right

Tweaking texture could give us healthy versions of our favourite junk foods – and that's just the beginning.

According to a recent Popular Science article, food’s texture, called rheology, is so intricately tied to our food preferences that it’s becoming a bona fide area of study.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) uses computational models to study how food moves and interacts with all of the surfaces of the mouth – technology previously used to predict tsunamis – to help better understand the connection.

How to Measure Whole Fruit Volume

Quality components of fruits and vegetables are classified into the external such as size (weight, volume and dimensions), colour, shape (diameter/depth ratio), external defects etc. and the internal such as sugar content, acid content, firmness, maturity etc and internal characteristics.

Agricultural products have the characteristics of being ‘low value added’ as compared with other industrial commodities. Because of this, application of start-of-the-art technology to agricultural sectors has been relatively recently activated and various up to date techniques have now reached the point of practical implementation.

Fruit Texture: How to measure consistency of fruit preparations

The market for fruit preparations continues to grow, in large part due to their health and natural image.

The addition of fruit is immediately seen to add value, as well as sophistication, to products, from yoghurt to fresh cheese and ice cream. Consumers look for a high level of large fruit pieces, evenly suspended, with a natural texture.

Today fruit preparations are technologically advanced ingredients which can fit perfectly into the end user’s applications – sweet and viscous or low in fat, but very high in fruit content. The correct stabiliser system is also crucial for obtaining the desired texture from the fruit preparation. Modified starches, gums and gels are essential to control viscosity and texture and to guarantee the stability of the fruit preparation.

Fruit Texture: How to measure properties of fruit leather, fruit films and fruit peel

Fruit Leather

A fruit leather is made by drying a very thin layer of fruit puree or a mixture of fruit juice concentrate and other ingredients on a flat surface in an oven, desiccators or in direct sunlight, to obtain a product with a chewy texture similar to soft leather. 

Almost any type of fruit is suitable for making fruit leathers. Fruit leather is easy to eat, convenient to pack, and makes an ideal popular snack almost anywhere for a mouth-watering sugar boost. When dried, the product is usually pulled from the surface, rolled and consumed. The control of the drying temperature is very important, as very high temperatures may cause case hardening, hindering the outflow of water. Too thin a layer of purée, on the other hand, can make the product brittle and difficult to be pulled from the surface.

Fruit Texture: How to measure firm pastes and dried fruit flakes

Measuring Firm Paste Texture 

Texture is a very important property of fruit pastes since they are often used as fillings for energy bars and other products containing fruits.

Among all textural properties, hardness and stickiness are the most important, since they can dictate the possibility of application onto a product. Usually fruit pastes are applied by lightly heated rollers. If the paste is too hard or sticky it may not be properly applied.

Fruit Texture: How to measure toughness and stickiness of dried fruit

Fresh fruits are in many ways ideal snacks, but suffer from difficulties in distribution and lack of universal seasonal availability.

Convenience, therefore, dictates that frequently some preparation and preservation needs to be carried out to ensure their availability throughout the year, ensure consistency of quality and even enhancement of particular attributes. 

Whilst dried fruits retain a great deal of their nutritive value they often come under criticism for texture as drying can cause considerable loss of textural integrity.

Fruit Texture: How to measure detachment and deseeding force

Measuring Detachment Force

Table grapes are highly perishable, non-climacteric fruits. Their shelf life is shortened by loss of firmness, berry drop, discoloration of the stem, desiccation and fungal rots.

The berry drop is due basically to dry-drop (or abscission) – ethylene in conjunction with falling auxin levels, induces the formation of an abscission zone at the pedicel-berry junction, thus stimulating their drop. Grape varieties susceptible to berry drop present a huge problem for successful storage and marketing. For this reason it is required to predict and control the harvested abscission of grape berries, which is not only of inherent scientific interest, but it also has considerable commercial significance.

Fruit Texture: How to measure flesh firmness of non-homogeneous fruits

Testing fruits of non-homogenous nature or variable texture, such as water melons where there is a high seed content, is not only tricky by any puncture, shearing or compression method, but often results in low reproducibility and misleading data.

In any of these tests, the data may show wide variances between maximum and minimum force resistance, depending upon whether the probe or fixture meets with less or more seeds or variable texture when tested. By penetrating the product in several areas at the same time, the Multiple Puncture Probe produces an averaging effect and is therefore more representative.