Food oral management: physiology and objective assessment

•Individual physiology affects the complex process of food oral manipulation.•Oral processing involves a dynamic set of physiological actions/functions.•Food breakdown path depends on the food, on the eater and on food–eater interactions.•Chewing behaviour, swallowing and salivation characterize oral processing physiology.•The challenge of food property assessment during oral processing is its accessibility.

Food undergoes a series of transformations during oral processing. During this dynamic process, the continuous interactions between oral surfaces and foods produce multiple sensations that are processed and converted by the brain into sensory perception. Food rheology, food–saliva interactions, interfacial properties and individual physiology affect food oral manipulation and, consequently, the way food is perceived and appreciated. Getting a better understanding of the complex process from food ingestion until swallowing is of great interest to academia and industry, since it can help to define strategies to design products that meet the need of specific consumer groups. Although a huge progress has been made in oral processing research, the detailed mechanisms involved in food oral management still need to be revealed.