ELECTROMYOGRAPHY: AN EMERGING TECHNIQUE FOR FOOD TEXTURE EVALUATION

摘要

Texture is the sensory and functional attribute of the food which depends on its surface, structural and mechanical properties.It is one of the important steps in designing new food products.Now an emerging technique “Electromyography” based on generation of myoelectrical activity during activation of masseter muscles is used to describe various texture related mechanical attributes of wide range of food products.EMG technique is influenced by various non-instrumental and instrumental variables: non-instrumental like number of sessions, number of food samples in a session, replicates of a sample, number of human subjects, facial anatomy, gender, age, time, personality, psychology, side of mastication, denture, swallowing problem and effect of training; and instrumental like frequency, amplification, data acquisition, voltage and time parameters.These variables bring about changes in the subject’s chewing behaviour.EMG plays a significant role in texture evaluation of food and shows good correlation with sensory and textural analysis for various food products.