Artificial mouth

2024: Product Announcement

On October 15, 2024, specialists from the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRAE) and the Fujita Medical University in Japan announced the development of the world's first artificial mouth. The device will help to better understand the process of chewing food in order to develop food for people who have health problems - for example, due to age.

It is noted that in the context of the growth of the world's population and the aging of citizens, one of the tasks of the food industry is to create innovative products that meet the needs of people suffering from age-related pathologies, such as sarcopenia (loss of skeletal muscle mass and muscle function) and problems with salivation or swallowing. Traditional models do not always accurately reproduce the anatomy of the mouth and the movement of the tongue, and therefore are ineffective in the development of food that takes into account the special needs of various populations. A new artificial mouth solves the problem.

The product is equipped with a silicone tongue that imitates the anatomical features of the human tongue - elasticity, wetting ability and roughness. This language includes three chambers that can be inflated with compressed air and deflated according to a specific algorithm to accurately reproduce the movements observed in humans.

The developers tested their device with three commercially available soft products: cream dessert, chocolate mousse and chocolate fondan. It turned out that food lumps obtained with the help of artificial mouth were similar in characteristics to those observed in healthy people. The product, according to the project participants, is a new tool for studying the dynamics of food processing in the mouth.^[1]

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