What food does to the body
Of key importance for the sensory or digestive performance of a food, skin care of pharmaceutical product for the consumer is the way the product interacts with the body. This interaction is often difficult to establish because it requires time consuming and expensive sensory panel tests or invasive physiological studies.Therefore, much product development relies on in vitro measurement of the materials. However, the measured rheological properties, tribological data and digestibility are not directly related to the actual performance of the product in the real context of a human body.
As a main goal to overcome this problem, insight FOOD inside collects knowledge and develops methodologies to assess the performance of the materials during their interaction with the body by including mechanistic knowledge avaiable from scientific studies reported in the literature and techniques that measure the in vivo interaction with the body. Currently available innovative techniques are ACOUSTIC EMISSION MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS and PHYSIOLOGY BASED IN-SILICO DIGESTION MODELLING
The concept
The key concept is that the performance of a product for a consumer is highly dependent on its interaction with the body.
As outlined in the figure, this interaction starts with the appearance and touch, for food followed by the experience of first bite and masticatory changes in the mouth, transforming the food into a swallowable bolus. Next the food enters the digestive tract, where it excites various alimentary receptors while being digested into absorbable species. The performance of any product in the consumer is directly dependent on the various processes and resulting sensations, which in turn depend on the way the structure and composition reacts to the surface and inner environment of the body and the way the body physiologically adapts to the product.
Mechanistic insight in these physical mechanism and the way these excite receptors and induce physiological adaptations in the body is relevant for directing product composition and structure to optimal performance.
Click on the tabs for ACOUSTIC EMISSION ANALYSIS, PHYSIOLOGY BASED DIGESTION MODELLING for further information on these topics.
Co-development and collaboration
I am searching for collaboration with the academic groups and commercial companies to apply, improve and extend the innovative research tools ACOUSTIC EMISSION MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS and PHYSIOLOGY BASED DIGESTION MODELLING and bring these into application in product development.
