Elsevier

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 242, 1 December 2021, 113580
Physiology & Behavior

Muscle activity during oral processing of sticky-cohesive foods

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2021.113580Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Chew work reduces towards the point of swallowing.

  • The trigger for swallowing is not low levels of stickiness.

Abstract

We investigated muscle activity during oral processing of sticky model foods. Chewing Time extracted from the EMG data distinguished the most sticky and least sticky model foods from the others, but was not a good discriminator between the other models. Mean chew work declined by 25.4%, while the median frequency shift (which is related to muscle fatigue) increased by 54.9% during oral processing for all the model foods, with the effect being greatest for the stickiest foods.

We conclude that the degree of stickiness is not a trigger for swallowing and changes in the other bolus properties, such as softness, may influence muscle activity to a level at which we can swallow.

Keywords

Sticky-cohesive foods
Oral processing
Chew work
Electromyography (sEMG)
Trigger for swallowing

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