Q. Texture of food product?
Texture may be accessed through touch or mouth feels. When the food is placed in the mouth, the surface of the tongue and other sensitive skin reacts to the feel of the surface of the food. Textural factors, therefore, include assessment through hand feel and mouth feel such as firmness, softness, juiciness, chewiness and grittiness. The texture of a food is often a major determinant of how little or well we like a food. The range of textures in foods is very great, and a deviation from an optimum or typical texture is a quality defect. We expect chewing gum to be chewy, crackers and potato chips to be crisp and steak to be compressible and shearable between the teeth. While buying bread, we squeeze bread as a measure of texture which indicates the degree of freshness. Refractometer is used for measuring texture.