Abstract
When eating food, the hardness of food is reportedly related to the metabolic status such as type 2 diabetes and waist circumference, and to lower jaw development. Therefore, to take the hardness of food into account at meals has been considered beneficial for metabolic amelioration and sound jaw development. However, the system that can easily estimate the hardness of food when eating meals in daily life has not been offered yet, although the hardness of food itself can be measured. In this study we theorized to use lower jaw acceleration for estimation of food hardness during mastication. As a basic study, an ultra-small accelerometer was attached to the subject’s mentum, and 3-axes acceleration data was obtained when eating soft or hard sample. As a result, there were significant differences between soft and hard samples when RMS and RMSSD were calculated. These results imply that the monitoring lower jaw acceleration may applicable for the estimation of food hardness during mastication.
