Is food oral processing a new meat quality dimension

Abstract

This study gives an overview of food oral processing of meat. Literature review in the last two decades shows three perspectives of research. First, the perspective known as 'ex ante' studies serves to analyse mechanical and textural properties of meat and enable correlation between these instrumental testing and food oral processing parameters. The second is clearly associated with the mastication process revealing the following parameters: number of chews, mastication duration, chewing and eating rates, saliva incorporation, food breakdown, particle number and size throughout the mastication process. The third 'ex post' perspective is associated with the post-swallowing period, focused on digestibility, satiety and energy intake.

The main conclusion of this study is that food oral processing studies pave the way for understating mastication of meat and widen meat science research perspectives in terms of modelling mastication (from the first bite to swallowing) and simulating meat breakage and flavour release.