WHAT GIVES FOOD ITS TEXTURE?

From crisp, crunchy fruit to satisfyingly stretchy cheese, explore the chemistry behind each bite

- AILSA HARVEY

Flavour alone doesn’t determine how highly you rate a food. The feeling of food in the mouth plays a huge part in your enjoyment of a meal. While taste receptors process the flavours in foods, nerve cells help the brain perceive the tactile feeling of the contents of your mouth. In the brain's somatosensory cortex — part of the parietal lobe at the top of the brain — signals from your mouth's interaction with food are incorporated into your perception of the experience.

Aside from the sense of touch, which is the primary texture-detecting response, kinesthetics also play a part in sensing texture. This is the movement and position of food in the mouth, and it's your teeth’s role to test this. As they chew on different foods, the mouth senses how they break apart, bend or stick to the teeth. The sight of food before it even touches the mouth also plays a part in our perception of its texture. You judge a food by how it sits on a plate at rest before you eat it. For example, the thickness of a sauce can be observed by how much it spreads on the plate, as well as its speed of movement. Finally, the sound of food or feel of it moving against your touch prepares your brain for how the food will feel in the mouth.