Abstract
Due to the increasing risk of obesity and cardiovascular diseases caused by high-fat diets, low-fat foods have become a priority demand for consumers’ health. However, the smoothness perception and scientific assessment methods of the existing low-fat foods should be improved. In this study, three food emulsions were prepared, and their lubrication characteristics, sensory evaluation of smoothness, and electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were assessed to preliminarily investigate the effects of food emulsion components on their above characteristics. The results showed that fat substitute (FSU) and fat could significantly reduce coefficient of friction (CoF) of the food emulsions, with average CoF reduced by 28% and 63% compared to the original food emulsions. In addition, fat-enriched food emulsions continued to exhibit excellent lubrication characteristics after adding artificial saliva, with an average CoF reduced by 31.1% compared to that of the food emulsions without artificial saliva. Both FSU and fat improved the smoothness of food emulsions, and the lubricating properties of fat were more pronounced, with fat-enriched food emulsion which could provide a substantial improvement in smoothness compared to the fat-free food emulsion. Comparison of subjects’ EEG signals revealed that food emulsion with lower CoF and higher smoothness triggered higher P3 amplitudes and longer latencies. These findings provide better insights into the scientific evaluation of food texture and the development of low-fat foods.
![](http://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs40544-024-0894-3/MediaObjects/40544_2024_894_Fig1_HTML.jpg)
Article PDF
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Kim J D, Yoon N A, Jin S, Diano S. Microglial UCP2 mediates inflammation and obesity induced by high-fat feeding. Cell Metab 30(5): 952–962 (2019)
Tellez L A, Medina S, Han W F, Ferreira J G, Licona-Limon P, Ren X Y, Lam T T, Schwartz G J, de Araujo, I E. A gut lipid messenger links excess dietary fat to dopamine deficiency. Science 341(6147): 800–802 (2013)
Difeliceantonio A G, Coppin G, Rigoux L, Thanarajah S E, Dagher A, Tittgemeyer M, Small, D M. Supra-Additive effects of combining fat and carbohydrate on food reward. Cell Metab 28(1): 33–44 (2018)
Cena H, Calder P C. Defining a healthy diet: Evidence for the role of contemporary dietary patterns in health and disease. Nutrients 12(2): 334–348 (2020)
Medina-Remon A, Kirwan R, Lamuela-Raventos R M, Estruch R. Dietary patterns and the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, asthma, and neurodegenerative diseases. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr 58(2): 262–296 (2018)
Mozaffarian D. Dietary and policy priorities for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity: A comprehensive review. Circulation 133(2): 187–225 (2016)
Childs J L, Drake M. Consumer perception of fat reduction in cheese. J Sens Stud 24(6): 902–921 (2009)
Ma Z, Boye J I. Advances in the design and production of reduced-fat and reduced-cholesterol salad dressing and mayonnaise: A review. Food Bioproc Tech 6(3): 648–670 (2013)
Peng X Y, Yao Y: Carbohydrates as fat replacers. Annu Rev Food Sci T 8: 331–351 (2017)
Kokini J L, Kadane J B, Cussler E L. Liquid texture perceived in the mouth. J Texture Stud 8(2): 195–218 (1977)
Paul V, Tripathi A D, Agarwal A, Kumar P, Rai D C. Tribology-Novel oral processing tool for sensory evaluation of food. Lwt-Food Sci Technol 160: 113270 (2022)
Qian S H, Cheng S, Liu Z, Xu F F, Yu J H. A rapid method to evaluate the chocolate smoothness based on the tribological measurement. J Texture Stud 51(6): 882–890 (2020)
Xu W H, Yu S K, Zhong M. A review on food oral tribology. Friction 10(12): 1927–1966 (2022)
Prakash S, Tan DDY, Chen J. Applications of tribology in studying food oral processing and texture perception. Food Res Int 54(2): 1627–1635 (2013)
Funami T, Nakauma M. Correlation of human perception in swallowing with extension rheological and tribological characteristics in comparison with shear rheology. J Texture Stud 53(1): 60–71 (2022)
Masen M, Cann P M E. Friction measurements with molten chocolate. Tribol Lett 66(1): 1–13 (2017)
Xu W, Jiang J, Xu Q, Zhong M. Drinking tastes of Chinese rice wine under different heating temperatures analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and tribology tests. J Texture Stud 52: 124–136 (2021)
Ningtyas D W, Bhandari B, Bansal N, Prakash S. A tribological analysis of cream cheeses manufactured with different fat content. Int Dairy J 73: 155–165 (2017)
Ningtyas D W, Bhandari B, Bansal N, Prakash S. Sequential aspects of cream cheese texture perception using temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) tool and its relation with flow and lubrication behaviour. Food Res Int 120: 586–594 (2019)
Bongaerts J H H, Fourtouni K, Stokes J R. Soft-tribology: Lubrication in a compliant PDMS-PDMS contact. Tribol Int 40(10): 1531–1542(2007)
Zhang Z, Huang Y T, Li L L, Wang W Q. Surface Modification of polydimethylsiloxane and its effect on evaluation of milk lubricating properties. Lubr Eng 47(3): 74–80 (2022)
Chen J S. Food oral processing: Some important underpinning principles of eating and sensory perception. Food Struct-Neth 1(2): 91–105 (2014)
Laguna L, Álvarez M D, Simone E, Moreno-Arribas M V, Bartolome B. Oral wine texture perception and its correlation with instrumental texture features of wine-saliva mixtures. Foods 8(6): 190–203 (2019)
De Wijk R A, Prinz J F, Janssen A M. Explaining perceived oral texture of starch-based custard desserts from standard and novel instrumental tests. Food Hydrocolloids 20(1): 24–34 (2006)
Macakova L, Yakubov G E, Plunkett M A. Influence of ionic strength on the tribological properties of pre-adsorbed salivary films. Tribol Int 44(9): 956–962 (2011)
Upadhyay R, Chen J S. Smoothness as a tactile percept: Correlating ‘oral’ tribology with sensory measurements. Food Hydrocolloids 87: 38–47 (2019)
Upadhyay R, Aktar T, Chen J S. Perception of creaminess in foods. J Texture Stud 51(3): 375–388 (2020)
Steven J L. An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique. Cambridge (USA): The MIT Press, 2014.
Songsamoe S, Saengwong-Ngam R, Koomhin P, Matan N. Understanding consumer physiological and emotional responses to food products using electroencephalography (EEG). Trends Food Sci Tech 93: 167–173 (2019)
Walsh A M, Duncan S E, Bell M A, O’Keefe S F, Gallagher D L. Integrating implicit and explicit emotional assessment of food quality and safety concerns. Food Qual Prefer 56: 212–224 (2017)
Martin G N. Human electroencephalographic (EEG) response to olfactory stimulation: Two experiments using the aroma of food. Int J Psychophysiol 30(3): 287–302 (1998)
Verhagen J V, Kadohisa M, Rolls E T. Primate insular/opercular taste cortex: Neuronal representations of the viscosity, fat texture, grittiness, temperature, and taste of foods. J Neurophysiol 92(3): 1685–1699 (2004)
Rolls E T, Mills T, Norton A B, Lazidis A, Norton I T. The neuronal encoding of oral fat by the coefficient of sliding friction in the cerebral cortex and amygdala. Cerebral Cortex 28(11): 4080–4089 (2018)
Tang W, Zhang S S, Yu C, Zhu H, Chen S, Peng Y X. Tactile perception of textile fabrics based on friction and brain activation. Friction 11(7): 1320–1333 (2023)
Chen S, Ge S R. Experimental research on the tactile perception from fingertip skin friction. Wear 376: 305–314 (2017)
Camillieri B, Bueno M A, Fabre M, Juan B, Lemaire-Semail B, Mouchnino L. From finger friction and induced vibrations to brain activation: Tactile comparison between real and virtual textile fabrics. Tribol Int 126: 283–296 (2018)
Morell P, Chen J S, Fiszman S. The role of starch and saliva in tribology studies and the sensory perception of protein-added yogurts. Food Funct 8(2): 545–553 (2017)
Zhou S S, Qian S H, Wang W, Ni Z F, Yu J H. Fabrication of a hydrophilic low-friction poly (hydroxyethyl methacrylate) coating on silicon rubber. Langmuir 37(45): 13493–13500 (2021)
Guedes-Oliveira J M, Brad K Y H, Conte-Junior C A. What are the potential strategies to achieve potentially more healthful meat products? Int J Food Sci Technol 56(12): 6157–6170 (2021)
Sherif S, Micheal K, Chao Z, Mohamed A F. Fat substitutes and low-calorie fats: A compile of their chemical, nutritional, metabolic and functional properties. Food Rev Int 39(8): 5501–5527 (2023)
Upadhyay R, Chen J. Smoothness as a tactile percept: Correlating ‘oral’ tribology with sensory measurements. Food Hydrocoll 87: 38–47 (2019)
Wang Y H, Wu Q. Food Sensory Evaluation. Beijing (China): China Light Industry Press, 2018.
Wijnen B, Hunt E J, Anzalone G C, Pearce J M. Open-Source syringe pump library. PLoS One 9(9): 107216 (2014)
Li Y Q. Basic Neuroscience. Beijing (China): Higher Education Press, 2010.
Shou T D. Neurobiology. Beijing (China): Higher Education Press, 2013.
Songsamoe S, Saengwong-Ngam R, Koomhin P, Matan N. Understanding consumer physiological and emotional responses to food products using electroencephalography (EEG). Trends Food Sci Technol 93: 167–173 (2019)
Mégevand P, Seeck M. Electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography and source localization: Their value in epilepsy. Curr Opin Neurol 31(2): 176–183 (2018)
McInnes Aaron N, Sung Billy, Hooshmand Reyhane. A practical review of electroencephalography’s value to consumer research. Int J Mark Res 65(1): 52–82 (2023)
Rolls E T, Deco g, Huang C C, Feng J F. The human language effective connectome. NeuroImage 258: 119352 (2022)
Kilavik B E, Zaepffel M, Brovelli A, MacKay W A, Riehle A. The ups and downs of beta oscillations in sensorimotor cortex. Exp Neurol 245: 15–26 (2013)
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51775244, 52375184) and Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Food Manufacturing Equipment and Technology (Jiangnan University) (FMZ202204).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. The author Shanhua QIAN is the Youth Editorial Board Member of this journal.
Additional information
Liang WANG. He received his bachelor degree in mechanical engineering from Tianjin University of Technology in 2019. He has recently obtained his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Jiangnan University. His research interests include biotribology and cerebral neurobehavior.
Ziyan ZHENG. He received his bachelor degree in mechanical and electronic engineering in 2022 from Nanjing Forestry University, China. He is a master student in mechanical engineering at Jiangnan University. His research interests include biotribology and soft materials.
Shanhua QIAN. He received his bachelor, master, and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from China University of Mining and Technology, in 2003, 2006, and 2009, respectively. After then, he worked as a postdoctor in the State Key Laboratory of Tribology in Advanced Equipment at Tsinghua University for two years. He joined the School of Mechanical Engineering at Jiangnan University from 2011. His current position is a professor and vice-dean of School of Mechanical Engineering. His research areas cover the bio-tribology of soft materials, foods, and coatings as well as bionic design.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Qian, S., Wang, L., Zheng, Z. et al. Study on the influence of food emulsion components on its lubrication characteristics and smooth perception. Friction (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-024-0894-3
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-024-0894-3