Zachary Cartwright [00:00:07]:
Food Texture is incredibly important in food acceptance. How to develop foods for specific groups of people while keeping this in mind. Welcome to the Drip, where we keep your mind hydrated with some science, music and a mantra. I'm your host, Zachary Cartwright. As a lead food scientist at AQUALAB, I primarily focus on moisture control and in different aspects of the food industry, especially in research and development, production and quality assurance. However, I've learned that it's also just as important to connect moisture control to sensory evaluation analysis because the water in food can greatly affect chemical and physical properties, resulting in different organoleptic properties that affect the perceived taste, smell, touch, sight, and even sometimes the sound. Here to discuss sensory evaluation is Dr. Gillen Ross, who is a professor of food science and director of the Washington State University Sensory Science Center.

Zachary Cartwright [00:01:03]:
In today's episode, we'll be discussing the importance of understanding how people perceive texture and the importance of understanding that different people have different eating abilities and how this can be used to design and formulate food products. With the help of Dr. Ross, we will walk through two case studies, including children with down syndrome and also older adults. Hi, Dr. Ross, thank you so much for being here today. To start off, can you just explain what sensory science is and why understanding texture perception is so crucial in food design?

Carolyn Ross [00:01:38]:
Oh, thank you for having me here. I'm very pleased to be talking to you all. Sensory science is a scientific study in which we look at human perception of products via the five senses. So we look at sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing all of those things. We evoke them, we measure them, we analyze the data, and then we interpret the reaction. And so it is again a scientific study. So it's hypothesis driven. And it really has two major roles.

Carolyn Ross [00:02:03]:
We're there to learn about humans, to measure the sensory attributes of the food, and then we're also using the food to gain fundamental insights into the human themselves. So it's kind of a two way road for understanding texture. It's so important because texture is a huge contributor to the liking and acceptance of food products. And I think there's a tendency to minimize that just to think, eh, they'll like it well enough. But if people don't like the texture of a food product, they're not going to eat it and they're not going to return to it, even though it might be incredibly nutritious. So it's really important to understand texture. And then also for those specific populations, for the children with down syndrome, children with older adults that we work with, it is almost therapeutic. I mean, just the texture is that important.

Zachary Cartwright [00:02:46]:
And how do individual differences in eating abilities affect the way that people experience texture in their food?

Carolyn Ross [00:02:53]:
There's a new term I called eating capability, which I find really useful to describe differences among individuals. And that was proposed by Anweesha Sakar at University of Leeds. And so it's looking at how we interact with foods and that texture perception according to basically four main categories. So there's hand manipulation, how we're feeling the food, how we're manipulating it. Our fingers get a lot of information tactile through our fingers. Oral manipulation. So how we're working with the product in our mouth, oral sensations, what we're perceiving in the mouth as well from biting and chewing, and then also cognition and coordination abilities. So those are all really important things to look at.

Carolyn Ross [00:03:33]:
And we tend to just think of textures in mouth. And I think that really oversimplifies how people perceive texture and how we can gather additional information to understand more about it.

Zachary Cartwright [00:03:43]:
I understand that you work a lot with children with down syndrome. What are the unique challenges or some of the considerations when designing food products for them?

Carolyn Ross [00:03:52]:
So children with down syndrome or trisomy 21, they have very, a specific set of unique challenges when it comes to food and feeding. So in children with down syndrome, eating and swallowing difficulties are present in about 80% of those kids. And within that 80%, about 45% specifically have food texture sensitivities or difficulties. So there's been a number of studies that have examined why that's the case. And there's a lot of anatomical and physical differences in children with down syndrome that delay their food oral, their oral motor delays, they have problems with chewing, they have problems with tongue manipulation. They may have other issues as well, as far as a narrow jaw hypotonia, which means that they're not. They don't necessarily have the muscle development for chewing. So what that results in is that there's somewhat often a preference of those children to take in things that are easy to eat, a lot of purees and liquids and things like that.

Carolyn Ross [00:04:45]:
Problematic for a couple reasons. One is it doesn't allow them to build the skills to be able to eat more challenging textures later in life. And those challenging textures are often associated with higher nutrient products, so things like fruits and vegetables. Also, the risk of choking in adults with down syndrome is extremely high. And that possibly is tied to how they've learned to interact with foods that they don't know how to orally process. All that goes back to early intervention teaching children with down syndrome how to chew foods, how to orally manipulate.

Zachary Cartwright [00:05:17]:
And I also understand that you have researched older adults and I'm wondering how do age related changes like reduced chewing ability or maybe taste sensitivity, how do these things influence food texture preferences?

Carolyn Ross [00:05:30]:
Yeah, there's so much variation across this population, as I'm sure you can imagine. But they've looked at declining oral health, alterations to oral processing that happen with age, changes to dentition, decreases in salivary secretion, all those are relatively common. Those are things that we can also gather data about. There can be also increased difficulties in chewing because of those dental changes, because of changes in dentition. There's also underlying health conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease. Those can all contribute to the ability to swallow, so can all contribute to the development of dysphagia. And so what we found is there's a lot of things that can feed into changes in how we accept foods and how we process foods as we get older. But what we found is that our older adults still want to maintain that food texture.

Carolyn Ross [00:06:18]:
And often with food product development with older adults, it's gone toward the lowest common denominator, which is let's just make it soft because then everyone can eat that. But we found that, yes, that's important and it is easier for some of those people to eat that, eat those softer foods. But by only focusing on developing soft textures, we're missing out on maintaining food textures variety for those older adults. So maintaining interest in food. So that is what we found, is that their food enjoyment has been linked with food texture variety and continuing to eat food. And if it's very much reduced food texture that's being associated with increased malnutrition and other health outcomes. So the importance of maintaining food texture for those older adults while appreciating that there's all these other changes that are happening with age.

Zachary Cartwright [00:07:04]:
I'm really happy to hear that this is being researched and prioritized because I think as I get older, I, I don't want to only eat soft foods and puddings and soups and things like that. So I'm glad that you're looking more into this and, and educating people about it. Can you walk us through the process of designing a food product for somebody with reduced eating abilities? What does that process look like, especially if you are consulting with somebody maybe in the food industry or a company trying to make these types of products?

Carolyn Ross [00:07:35]:
Yeah. Within food product development, the understanding and appreciation of the consumer as an individual has grown. And so in response, within food product development, we have to understand the individual needs and desires of that consumer. Also understanding that there's so much human variation as well. And so if you're looking at developing a new food product, it's really important to study that eating capability piece, which means forming multidisciplinary teams and bringing in people with expertise in eating and feeding. So even for adults and for children as well. So speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists that can look at, you know, tactile manipulation of the food products, nutritionists, dietitians as well. So having that expertise in the team is really important because it's really important to then understand what are the eating and chewing challenges that are associated with that specific population.

Carolyn Ross [00:08:29]:
So for example, working with an occupational therapy therapists can give knowledge about sensory integration strategies that could help texture adjustments for the food. So again, it's recognizing that there's the food science part and then there's more, the eating part and there's expertise within both of those fields that would be required.

Zachary Cartwright [00:08:48]:
And I'm curious a little bit about how you gather the data on texture preference, especially for these different types of groups, especially if they have difficulty communicating these preferences. How, how are you collecting the data? And, and also how do you analyze it?

Carolyn Ross [00:09:03]:
Very complicated. So in our children with down syndrome were not able to collect data directly from the children as a whole. There may be some specifically that we're able to, but as a whole population, we ran a study with 111 children, we would not have been able to collect data directly from them. So we couldn't use the good old nine point hedonic scale from those children. So we did it in a number of ways. So one way is that we collected parent data about the product. So these children were sent these big boxes of food. They tried the product every day, once a day for six days.

Carolyn Ross [00:09:36]:
The parent recorded their reactions. And I'll get to that in a minute. But they all, the parent answered the questions, how much do you like the food? So how much does a parent like the food? Because that's been shown to influence how much the child likes the food. And then we also asked the parent how much they think their child liked the food. So we collected those, those parent or those caregiver related responses and then we also recorded the child eating the food product. Those videos were sent to us and we had trained coders evaluate those videos for various behaviors. So we had non verbalization communication, those kinds of things. So by that I mean was the child smiling? Did the child pull the product toward them? Did the child push the product away.

Carolyn Ross [00:10:16]:
So we looked at all of those behaviors as well as suggestive of how the child felt about the food product, can also look at how much the child ate. So there's other measures too. So that's for our children. For older adults, it was something similar that we were looking at. We've looked at individual, collected data from the individuals themselves and that they were able to understand the scale and be able to record those data. But there's been a lot of research that has also looked at other types of tests. So whether you have more of a, an easier test where you've got, for example, a paired preference test or a paired difference, you just have two samples and then you choose which one is more liked, which one is higher in sweetness, which one is crispier. So that's a slightly, you know, slightly easier task if your population is able to do that.

Carolyn Ross [00:10:58]:
You can also look at behavioral coding. So where you record the person interaction interacting with the food product and then interpret those. And then also it would be important to collect caregiver scores. So what they think of the product, what do they, you know, they know the person fairly well. So what do they think that person thinks of the food product? There's also been work within those older adults too, looking at whether they can respond on tablets, whether paper ballots are better. So there's all those kinds of questions too. But it's very much understanding the population that you have that you're working with to be able to collect the data.

Zachary Cartwright [00:11:30]:
And in your field, are there any emerging trends or maybe different technologies in sensory science that help improve food design for people, especially with different eating abilities? I know you mentioned that new term earlier, but are there other trends in technologies that you'd like to mention?

Carolyn Ross [00:11:46]:
That part that there's just the consumer centric view from product development. So appreciating human variability is very wide ranging. So how much data can we collect about the individual? And then we can use those data and data analysis as covariates as ways of describing why we're seeing the variation in the data. If we can collect as much information about the individual as we possibly. Some of those measures you can do on a survey, they can be self reported, some of them, you need to have them come into a lab in order to collect the data. For example, saliva flow, which we did. That's a hard thing to do at home. So there are some information you can collect from a survey, some you need to go out and, or have people come into the, into the center to gather, I think transfer more interdisciplinary Teams.

Carolyn Ross [00:12:30]:
So not just developing a food, but understanding how someone's going to eat the food. I think that's been a trend. And then regarding specific technology, there's been a lot of research in the area of extrusion, which helps change the product as far as, you know, the crispy dissolvability end of the scale. And so introducing that having an extruded product with increased fiber, for example, so it's still crispy, but it's got more fiber, it's more nutrient dense. So those are some of the trends I've seen.

Zachary Cartwright [00:12:57]:
I know you've been doing this a while and have focused on other groups and lots of different products. What are some of the most surprising discoveries you've come across while doing your research?

Carolyn Ross [00:13:07]:
Our children with down syndrome. I've just found that the importance of texture is underlined across everyone. So we found that in our home use tests for the children's behavior, it was most predicted by food product texture. Significantly the most across all age groups. When we looked at parents, when we asked them to report, what textures or what attributes of a food do you find to be important for your child? Texture number one, significantly different. Same thing as when we surveyed practitioners in the United States and in Australia. Again, texture. So it's just, I guess it aligns with what I thought.

Carolyn Ross [00:13:42]:
But I'm still struck at how texture has been underlined consistently across these different populations, across these different countries. So I think we can all agree how important texture is. And then for older adults finding this, the desire to maintain texture, how important it is to them, this is really important. Of course, again, we've got the idea of softer food, it is easier to eat, but they have a great desire to eat these to just maintain their food texture.

Zachary Cartwright [00:14:10]:
And what advice would you give to any food scientists or maybe different product developers who, when they're considering and thinking about texture in their formulations, develop products.

Carolyn Ross [00:14:20]:
That people both enjoy and can eat. So eating capability, they can eat it comfortably and they enjoy it. We have to make sure both of those things. Everyone's an individual, so there's going to be. We're. We always, of course, try to make generalizations from our data, which is important too. But you do have to understand the individual variation as well. Again, it's not just the ability to eat it as far as texture goes, but to see also the liking of the texture, because even if they can eat it, if it's not very exciting to them.

Carolyn Ross [00:14:46]:
Again, there has been that research that has shown that there are negative health outcomes that can be associated with that. I think the critical importance of not sacrificing texture for other properties. So even if a food has an amazing nutritional profile, if the texture isn't interesting to the consumer or the, or the person doesn't like it, they're not going to continue to eat it. And so that, that's been some of the focus of past research that has looked at more of those, you know, functional food products or personalized nutrition products. The focus has been on the nutritional profile. And I am not minimizing the nutritional profile. But texture is also incredibly important. And so I think that is also important to think about when you're developing a highly nutrient dense product or you're looking at specific populations, keeping in mind the texture.

Zachary Cartwright [00:15:32]:
Sometimes when I meet with different companies or clients, I'm amazed that a lot of their sensory research they do internally, they maybe have one small focus group and I think it's really biased sometimes because they are not outsourcing some of this testing or doing consumer panels. How can food companies and researchers ensure that they're getting the sensory data that they need and also ensure that they're being inclusive in their product design, especially for the groups that we've discussed today.

Carolyn Ross [00:16:02]:
So when we're looking at what can companies do, I think they need to understand who the product is going to be targeted for and then making sure that those are the people who are in the room or people who know about that population are in the room when the product design decisions are being made, come back again to those multidisciplinary groups. Especially if you're looking more at a, almost a therapeutic food. If you've got to have these very specific textures, if you're trying to nail all those based on a specific study that maybe you've seen about what products a person or a group would like, those people need to, not just the food scientists need to be there, but eating specialists need to be there in order to provide a voice for those individuals who will be eating the food product. Very important to include them in the sensory testing. Is that hard? Yes, it's really tough to recruit specialized populations. And that's why when we did our testing in children with down syndrome, it was a national study, it was where we sent food products out. That makes things a lot trickier, but what it does do is it allows you to recruit enough people to participate.

Zachary Cartwright [00:17:03]:
Yeah, I'm just curious how companies can maybe improve their approach to sensory. How can they do a better job? And instead of just having a small internal group of scientists that taste These things all the time. What's a better way to maybe conduct a consumer panel or more of a trained panel where they're looking for very specific attributes? What, what are your recommendations for companies that, that are in that situation wanting to improve the sensory data that they're collecting?

Carolyn Ross [00:17:32]:
My recommendation would be to outsource it. So you may have some internal information, but to look externally at companies that offer those kinds of services, a trained sensory evaluation panel, a consumer panel with the population that you're interested in understanding that you may need to make some tweaks as far as the experimental design goes. But I think definitely having external expertise, particularly for that trained sensory evaluation panel on the consumer, to be able to collect solid data that can help drive those decisions. Because you can definitely collect data, but is it going to be valid? Is it going to be reliable? Is it going to be biased? Those are things you really have to think about is how useful are these data in helping address future decisions.

Zachary Cartwright [00:18:16]:
And finally, with my background and the work that I do at AQUALAB, I'm curious what role you see water activity playing in sensory analysis, especially as it relates to food texture?

Carolyn Ross [00:18:28]:
This is something that came up in research when we were doing our home use test, because we, as I said before, we sent it to 36 different states. Those states varied widely in their temperatures, their daily temperatures, and their humidity levels. And so we were having the children try the food once a day every day for six days. And we didn't want that product to change between day one and day five, which it could do, right? It could pick up moisture. So we ended up sending them individual food products for all of those days. But for food product development, especially if crispy and dissolvable are really key attributes, like they are for the children with down syndrome that our research suggested, water activity can greatly affect those properties. And so you may design a food that is great and children really like it. Children with down syndrome really like it at day one, and so they are really into it, but then maybe four days later they're not.

Carolyn Ross [00:19:20]:
So in some populations, water activity could change a product from being great to maybe less great. But in some populations, it could be as important as changing it from acceptable to not acceptable. The children just may not eat it if the product picks up too much moisture. So understanding how storage affects the product is very, very important.

Zachary Cartwright [00:19:39]:
And looking to the future, how do you think our understanding of texture and eating abilities will evolve? And what impact will this have on the food industry?

Carolyn Ross [00:19:48]:
I think we're going to continue to uncover the needs and desires of specific populations. We're going to continue to appreciate human variability and the studies are going to get more complicated, especially as we start looking at, I'm saying niche populations, but they're not necessarily niche, they're just more specified. I think that that's going to continue in that research area and that products are going to become in some ways more personalized. So we already have 36 different kinds of spaghetti sauce. I think that'll continue because I think that there's so much variation among individuals that those specific products will be continued to be developed.

Zachary Cartwright [00:20:22]:
Thank you so much for those insights. Your research is really interesting and looking at these different groups and focusing a lot on texture recently. So thank you for joining us and going through that. I want to switch gears a little bit and I'm curious, what is your music recommendation that you brought with you today?

Carolyn Ross [00:20:39]:
So I'm born in the 70s, raised and reared in the 80s, so I am, I'm an 80s person. So I brought some Van Halen with me. I also like Elvis Costello, but Van Halen has always been a number one.

Zachary Cartwright [00:20:52]:
Well, thank you so much for bringing that in. What mantra did you bring with you today? Is there a, a saying, a quote, something that motivates you as you work on, on your research?

Carolyn Ross [00:21:02]:
I have the mantra of I'm a good parent, I'm a good worker. I think both of those things can be true. Sometimes it can be hard to balance and sometimes you don't balance because something comes up and it moves the teeter totter one way or the other. But I think telling yourself that, that you can. Two things can be true. There's another thing that I have on my desk as well, and it's from the musical Matilda, which is nobody but me going to change my story, which I love because it gives you agency. You can change things if something isn't going your way. It may not be an overnight fix, it can be the long game.

Carolyn Ross [00:21:37]:
But you can really change things in personal life, work life as well. Just figure out how you can do that. But it really, it gives you agency and gives you hope because you have these, you can control how things go.

Zachary Cartwright [00:21:49]:
Thank you for your mantra, your music and a little bit of science today. We really appreciate it. I think our audience will find this really engaging, a little different than maybe some of the other formulation heavy conversations we've had in the past. So thank you for coming on today. We really appreciate it. Today's episode is sponsored by AQUALAB. In this episode we discuss sensory evaluation of foods did you know that AQUALAB has a partnership with the Washington State University Sensory Science Center? That means that in addition to receiving insights into moisture control through the R and D production, quality assurance, packaging and shelf life testing steps of your process, we can also work together to answer your sensory evaluation questions. Whether you need consumer acceptance tests, trained panels, statistical analysis of your data, or simply want to use the electronic tongue, AQUALAB and WSU can work with you to determine the right sensory and analytical test to give your team the data it needs to make a successful product.

Zachary Cartwright [00:22:54]:
A link to all the available sentry and analytical capabilities will be in the Podcast Description Today's song recommendation is the song Here With Me by Marshmello. This is a heartfelt blend of electronic beats and emotional lyrics featuring Church's Lauren Mayberry on vocals. Released in 2019, the song explores themes of longing and connection with Mayberry's ethereal voice, adding depth to Marshmello's signature pop infused production. The track balances vulnerability and energy, making a standout radio friendly anthem. While it doesn't reinvent Marshmallow style, it reinforces his knack for creating catchy, emotional, resonant hits. They appeal to both electronic and pop audiences. This past year I dressed up as Marshmallow for Halloween and I wanted to pick one of my favorite songs of his to share with you. A link to the song will be in the podcast description.

Zachary Cartwright [00:23:53]:
To round out this episode, I'll be offering another mantra as a reminder. This can be a quote, a saying, anything that you use that you can repeat to yourself to express something that you believe in or to motivate yourself. This episode's mantra is I'm brave enough to climb any mountain. I'll repeat this three times and maybe you, the listener, can repeat it to yourself or even say it out loud. Okay, here we go. I'm brave enough to climb any mountain. I'm brave enough to climb any mountain. I'm brave enough to climb any mountain.

Zachary Cartwright [00:24:34]:
As you keep this mantra in mind, I also challenge you to ask yourself, what is the bravest thing you've ever done and in what ways are you currently being brave? Thank you so much for listening to this episode. My name is Zachary Cartwright and this has been another episode, the Drip, brought to you by AQUALAB. Stay hydrated and see you next time.