Abstract
A study was conducted for the purpose of grasping the characteristics of physical properties of foods which are eaten routinely and of classifying the foods by measuring such physical properties by a single set of standards. Using a texturometer, a total of 145 different kinds of routinelyeaten foods selected as samples were checked in order to find out their firmness, spring, cohesiveness and adhesiveness. Then, based on the measured values of parameters thus obtained, an overall classification of the foods was made. As for firmness, a sensory test was also conducted and the following results were obtained:
1) By means of principal component analysis using four parameters, the authors were able to classify the foods into six food types as follows:
(i) Basic-type foods: these include boiled vegetables and fruit. They have no adhesiveness and all other parameters are low.
(ii) Type-I foods: the main items are fish and meat. As firmness increases, so do spring and cohesiveness.
(iii) Type-II foods: these include mainly raw vegetables and confectionery with low adhesiveness. Firmness is higher then in the previous two types but this type is about the same as the basictype in spring and cohesiveness.
(iv) Adhetion foods: these have adhesiveness and as the adhesiveness increases, so do spring and cohesiveness. Main items in this category are starchy foods.
(v) Sponge foods: representative one in this category is sponge cake. Firmness is low but spring and cohesiveness are high.
(vi) Gel foods: as firmness increases, so does spring. An example is 'Kamaboko'(boiled fish paste). Types I and II and adhesion and gel foods were further classified quantitively into three groups.
2) As to the distribution of firmness, the food items were found to concentrate on those showing small measured values, and 60% of the whole was occupied by food items that were sensed as being soft.
3) As a result of ranking of the foods by parameter, it was found that, while potatoes and fruit were ow both in spring and cohesiveness, meat tended to be high in both of these two parameters. In addition 18% of the samples possessed adhesiveness.983
