Study of a Standard for Food Thickeners Using Visual Information

Abstract

  For food thickeners, commercial food products such as tonkatsu sauce are used as a guide in order to help users understand their relative consistencies. However, users confirm the consistency of thickeners visually. When using the guide based on physical properties, food preparation becomes difficult because the appearance of the food is different. Therefore, we constructed an imaging system using a camera and visual information, and measured the thickeners by image processing. As a result, we confirmed that there is a high correlation in terms of viscosity between spreading and drip conditions. Both are effective in determining the consistency of a thickener. However, as a result of comparing by visual information potage soup-like and tonkatsu sauce-like thickeners, it was found that their consistencies often disagreed with the guide.

  In this paper, we found that the food thickeners we used look different from regular food, making it possible to confuse the user and make food preparation difficult. Although many studies on physical properties have been conducted, we can expect a more accurate understanding of food thickeners if visual information is also considered.