Surface texture of foods: Perception and characterization

Surface texture is generally accepted as a key sensory factor of food materials and has great impact on consumers' perception and expectation of a food product. However, no authentic definition has been given in the literature for the term surface texture. Its real meaning is often rather confusing, varying from case to case and from person to person. A general consensus is that surface texture is a multi-parameter sensory factor composed of those surface-related features which can be perceived by visual, tactile handfeel, and tactile mouthfeel senses. A list of such surface-related features has been produced in this review, and of those, topographical properties are probably the most intensively investigated features in literature and are discussed in detail in this paper. The surface texture of a food can be characterized by either sensory panel tests or by physical instrument tests. The former uses panellists (trained or untrained) for sensory assessment, while the latter applies physical techniques to characterize the surface. While sensory tests are widely used for studies on consumers' perception and preference of foods, instrumental characterization uses one or few parameters to define a surface (either qualitatively or quantitatively). Physical techniques used for surface characterization are categorized into two groups: surface contacting and non-surface contacting. The former include tribometer, surface force apparatus, contact profilometry, atomic force microscopy, friction force microscopy, etc. Non-surface contacting techniques include gloss metre, fiber optic reflectometer, angle-resolved light scattering apparatus, surface glistening points method, electron microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, etc. The principles and application examples of these techniques were discussed in this review.