Evaluation of Food Texture

Universal Design Foods is a term for foods that have been designed with consideration to texture or being easy to eat, and which can be used for everything from everyday meals to nursing-care foods. In Japan, with its rapidly aging society, a variety of nursing-care foods are currently available, and such meals must be suitable for patients.
The Japan Care Food Conference has established the Universal Design Foods concept, which is classified into 4 categories by hardness and viscosity. In this article, we introduce a system for measuring hardness.