Evaluation of "safe" food that caters to the different eating functions of the aged

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The present study examined mixed sol-gel samples as exemplary models of "safe" food tailored to meet the needs of the aged whose eating functions are declining. Powdered yam was used to prepare sol samples with five different levels of hardness. Steamed Chinese yam was formed into cubes to create the gel samples. Equal parts of the sol and the gel samples were mixed together to create five different types of sol-gel samples. With the exception of the sample with salad oil-like hardness, all sol-gel samples exhibited lower values in both firmness and adhesiveness, but higher values in cohesiveness, compared with those of gel or sol samples alone. In a sensory analysis, the sol-gel samples containing sols equivalent in hardness to mayonnaise and grated Japanese yam were evaluated as "easy to swallow."In the same study, two different age groups (the young and the aged) took part in sensory analysis of flour starch agar-gel samples mixed with sol samples with three different levels of hardness. Slightly different trends were disclosed in the outcome of the evaluation between the two groups.Observation of the swallowing mechanism under videomanofluorography revealed that, the gel content of the sample using sol with a firmness equivalent to that of salad oil---the softest and least cohesive of the samples---temporarily remained in the vallecula after the swallowing, causing the sol content of the sample to flow into the pharynx in advance to the gel. However, for the sol-gel mixture with a mayonnaise-like firmness, no residue was observed in the pharynx after the swallowing.