Modeling structural and compositional changes of beef during human chewing process

•We revealed the mechanism on the changes of beef in the process of human chewing.•FT-IR showed the main absorption peak of C–Cl shift to right during chewing process.•SEM showed the surface changes of beef during chewing process.•Dynamic simulation model was built by Radical Basis Function to simulate the chewing process.

The microscopic, mechanical, and physiochemical changes of beef during human chewing process were analyzed, and the results were employed to build a prediction model. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that microscopically, the main absorption peak of C–Cl moved from 696 to 617 cm−1 during the chewing process, and the beef surface was altered from a complete muscle bundle to a granular meat paste. Analysis of mechanical properties showed that the fracture toughness, hardness, springiness, gumminess and chewiness were most greatly affected by the first six chews. Physiochemically, the inclusion of saliva altered only the weight of a sample. Finally, a dynamic simulation model with accuracy of 96.6% was built by Radical Basis Function (RBF), and was proved to be able to estimate food bolus quality.