Oral comfort: A new concept to understand elderly people's expectations in terms of food sensory characteristics

In humans, oral food intake is the ultimate stage of food supply chain and the beginning of food disintegration and digestion process. During aging, the oral health changes and sometimes eating food can be a real challenge as food can be hard to masticate, humidify or swallow. To meet this challenge, and as part of the AlimaSSenS project, a team of researchers from the Centre of taste and eating behaviour investigated the concept of ``oral comfort'' when eating a food in an elderly population. A group of 107 seniors aged 65 years and more participated in qualitative (focus group) and quantitative studies (tasting sessions) in order to explore the concept of oral comfort when eating, according to elderly people, and develop a questionnaire to evaluate the oral comfort when eating a food product. The results of the study highlighted that oral comfort when eating a food product is a multi -dimensional concept, which includes dimensions related to food oral processing, food sensory properties and, to a lesser extent, pain sensation. The concept of oral comfort when eating food should be taken into account by those who are willing to design food products tailored to the elderly population. (C) 2020 Societe francaise de nutrition. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.