Snack Chat: Chew Chew

A quick one on chewing through it

One of many fantastic charts in Nik Sharma’s cookbook The Flavor Equation is a table titled Food Mouthfeel Categories. “Some scientists classify us by our preference for different food textures,” he writes — chewers! crunchers! suckers! smooshers!

Page 31 in Nik Sharma’s The Flavor Equation lists four food mouthfeel categories: chewers, crunchers, suckers, and smooshers.

The reason why we can even ponder whether we’re a chewer vs. a smoosher is because of somatosensory receptors, i.e. specialized cells in specialized organs like our mouths, but also our eyes, ears, noses, and some organs inside our bodies. “Some of these [cells], the mechanoreceptors, sense when food touches the mouth, the pressure the weight of a heavy liquid such as oil or a piece of food presses against our tongue, the texture of a ruffled chip or waffle, the sponginess of a slice of bread, and the fizz of bubbles of carbon dioxide trapped inside beer or champagne.”