Mouthfeel is the texture and sensation experienced when consuming food and beverages – from how it looks, tastes, sounds and feels in the mouth.
Although mouthfeel plays a large role in the taste experience, mastering its nuances can be challenging. Consumers choose food based on taste, making mouthfeel a critical factor when designing an eating experience.
While nutrition is still a key demand driver, consumers are increasingly putting emphasis on other factors such as affordability, clean label and sustainability. These reformulation waves will keep coming, with requirements becoming increasingly complex. But one element that cannot be compromised is taste.
“Consumers struggle to articulate their preference in texture and mouthfeel. So, without this insight, how can you possibly get the mouthfeel right? To be accurate in formulation you need to know what consumers want in terms of mouthfeel and how it translate into sensory attributes,” says Veronica Cueva, Vice President Application and Solution Development at Tate & Lyle.
“We can be caught in a cycle of trial and error,” says Cueva. “However, this process can lack accuracy and be complex and cumbersome, all the while draining money and resources.”
Tate & Lyle’s Spotlight On, ‘Mouthfeel: The key to securing success in the next reformulation waves’, delves into the scientific tools that provide the accuracy and speed needed for these formulation processes.
The broadcast explores how mouthfeel is a key component in taste and why this is an essential skill to be mastered by formulators. Deep diving into the research and innovations within mouthfeel, the broadcast explores the key trends impacting mouthfeel and helping brands to create eating experiences that consumers love.
Sound: The forgotten flavour sense
To get to the heart of mouthfeel, it is important to understand where mouthfeel preferences come from. To help us do this, there is a whole field of scientific research dedicated to how we perceive and interpret food and beverages.
Featuring in Tate & Lyle’s Spotlight On broadcast, Professor Charles Spense, world leading expert in sensory science and experimental psychology, brings fresh insights into how science and creativity combine to elevate the eating experience.
In an experiment to demonstrate that sound is the forgotten flavour sense, two crunchy snacks were tested and compared in relation to crunchiness. The recipient tasted each snack in front of the microphone – determining that the second was crunchier than the first.
Once both snacks were tested, Professor Spense revealed that he had modified the sound when the second snack was bitten into. “The first bite you had was just a normal sound made by the chip when you bit into it. But the second one, I fiddled with the equipment here to boost the high frequency component of the crunching sound,” says Professor Spense.
“This references research we did here in Oxford back in 2004, which won us the Ig Nobel Prize in Nutrition, demonstrating that you can enhance the crispness and enjoyment of potato chips by boosting the sound of the crunch by 15%,” adds Professor Spense.
Multi-sensory eating experience
Inspired by academics like Professor Spense, Jozef Youssef – Multi-Sensory Chef and Founder of Kitchen Theory – translates this scientific understanding into a tangible, edible form. In Tate & Lyle’s Spotlight On, Youssef presents a variety of dishes designed to play with perception. The first dish, called Sunnyside Egg on Brioche, demonstrates how sight and taste is interconnected.
“When diners first see it, their brain instantly prepares for the sight, texture and mouthfeel of a fried egg. Firm white, warm yolk, soft chew and toast crunch. But the moment they taste, expectations are turned on their head,” says Youseff.
“The egg white is actually a coconut panna cotta set with a seaweed based gelling agent to recreate a supple, slightly elastic texture of cooked egg white. The yolk is a mango gel designed with a burstable membrane that mimics a real yolk’s resistance and flow. When it breaks, it releases a sweet, jammy center that spreads over the tongue, delivering both textural contrast and a dynamic mouthfeel transition from firm to fluid.
“The toasted brioche base adds a warm, light crunch and a gentle chew, anchoring the experience with familiar structure. Its buttery richness enhances the tropical coconut and mango flavors, while a sprinkle of Maldon salt adds a tiny crystalline crunch that punctuates each bite,” adds Youseff.
The dish highlights how fascinating the mouthfeel journey can be. While the textures work together in harmony, the sensory cues are misleading – demonstrating that mouthfeel isn’t only about texture, it’s about perception. How something looks, feels and sounds all feed into how the brain decides what we are tasting.
Sensory science: Translating consumer experience
The link between consumer research and science is called sensory science. This involves translating consumer experience into scientific language and understanding that all senses are used when eating or drinking.
Taking yogurt as an example, Marcia Petit, Global Sensory Director at Tate & Lyle, explores the process of mouthfeel from start to finish. Once opening yogurt, consumers immediately smell the flavour and observe the visual texture. Consumers have different expectations for different product types; for example, Greek yogurt can be dull while low fat yogurt can be shiny – consumers come to expect this.
“While stirring, you perceive the force it takes to stir the yogurt, setting expectations for thickness. When more difficult to stir, you expect the yogurt to be smooth and thick. If easy to stir, it is expected to be thin,” says Petit.
Spoonability is another aspect of mouthfeel. “You observe how high the yogurt sits on the spoon. This sets a mouthful expectation for how dense and smooth the product will be. Higher mounting sets expectations for a thicker, more indulgent experience. Thinner yogurt may signal a healthier yogurt.”
When the yogurt is pushed to the roof of the mouth, the tongue will determine the force it takes to flatten the mass in your mouth. It is assessing how smooth, grainy, thin or thick the mass is. “When the tongue moves the mass down the throat while saliva thins the mass, you are detecting how long the mass takes to dissolve, how much effort it takes to swallow and how much it coats your mouth,” adds Petit.
This is mouthfeel – and it happens in seconds. All five senses are leveraged to understand consumer preference and create products for every occasion.
State-of-the-art tools for mouthfeel formulation
Tate & Lyle’s propriety tool Tate & Lyle Sensation™ is a formulation tool that helps to translate consumer preferences in mouthfeel in specific categories and geographies into scientific terms, simplifying the briefing process and delivering accurate solutions faster.
“This tool can connect the dots between what consumers want and the ingredients needed to create those sensory attributes. It makes formulation quicker and more accurate,” says Marina Di Migueli, Global Marketing Director for Mouthfeel at Tate & Lyle.
“Consumer expectations change according to the consumption moment. For example, consumers in China have a yogurt after lunch or dinner for digestion assistance. They also have yogurt in the afternoons or after meals for indulgence. What they expect from each of these types of yogurts in terms of texture is very different, so we listen to focus groups to gather these insights.”
Tate and Lyle Sensation translates these consumer insights into scientific lexicon. “When a consumer first looks at a yogurt, they describe it as shiny or grainy, thick or thin, with a jelly-like texture or easy to break. And while these are consumer terms, for us scientists these are descriptors of visual texture,” adds Di Migueli.
These insights are translated to the food matrix – focusing on how ingredients change the microstructure and leverage processes and technologies to unlock the optimal ingredient functionality while elevating those preferred sensory attributes.
Tapping into consumer preference is key to choosing the correct ingredient for formulations. Watch On Demand to tap into Tate & Lyle’s mouthfeel expertise: ‘Mouthfeel: The key to securing success in the next reformulation waves’.
