Food Is Sensory

Food is Sensory

Marsha Dunn Klein OTR/L and Karen Dilfer, OTR/L

Eating food IS a sensory experience. We vapors that reach the nose from the learn to love food by experiencing its many chewing process, or even the burping sensory properties. We develop favorites process. They coming from within our and enjoy our mealtimes. Food has smells, bodies. Both oro-nasal smell and retro- tastes, textures, makes noise, and looks a nasal smell give us information about taste. certain way! When children struggle to eat, Smell is closely associated with our we need to consider the sensations of the emotions and our memories. We all have food as a variable as we help them learn to had the experience of having a smell enjoy new foods and expand their diets. We immediately remind of us of a past can change the sensory properties of foods experience, time and place. Smells actually and think about them on a continuum. help us put information into memory Let’s consider these sensory aspects of storage and pull it back out. Smells also food. contribute to our emotional responses. We Smell, taste from a distance! can REALLY like a smell or REALLY NOT like it. We react to smell! Smell contributes to Food smell is a preview of the taste to our willingness to even try new foods. come, a rehearsal. Smell is 80% of taste and we can think of it as taste from a Taste is complicated distance. We understand smell two ways. The taste buds on our tongue pick up Oro-nasal smell is the external smell information about specific and combination sensation that comes in through the nose tastes. The tastes of sweet, salty, sour and from the outside. It is the way we smell bitter have traditionally been thought to be cooking bacon and the burst of orange as mapped on the tongue in certain areas, but we squeeze it. It is our way to check out a we now understand that all the taste buds new food before we even try it to know contribute in some way to taste feel. We whether it should even come to our mouth. also now consider another taste area, It is how we can protect ourselves from umami. It is the savory, meat-like taste placing bad smelling, or even toxic things more recently included as we analyzed our into our mouth. If it smells BAD, we do not taste interpretations. want it in our mouths. Smell helps us protect ourselves! Our taste preferences are personal. Unborn babies begin their tasting experiences in Retro-nasal smell is the internal smell we amniotic fluid and newborns taste changes receive from within our mouth as food is with breast milk. We are wired to prefer chewed or swished around. The smell sweeter flavors initially, perhaps as a

protection, so we do not eat foods BAD for Mouritsen and Styrbaek describe the us. Toddlers take time to appreciate more appreciation food as more than taste, but bitter tastes of some vegetables and some also, and very importantly, as the physical think there is a genetic predisposition for characteristics of foods as mouthfeel. enjoyment (or not) of some of the more The sound of crunch! bitter vegetable flavors. Taste preferences evolve over time. They are influenced by And, food also has sound! The crunch or personal, familiar and cultural experiences. crisp of biting through foods provides an Taste is considered the “bedrock of flavor” external auditory sound, but also we have by Bob Holmes of Flavor: Our Most internal bone conduction sound from the Neglected Sense in his descriptions of this jaw experience of chewing that vary with complicated personal sensation. the complexity of the solid. These sounds can be subtle, or very LOUD. They can When we think of flavor of foods, we must enhance our enjoyment or contribute to consider the contributions of both displeasure. sensations of smell and taste. But, texture feel is also a contributing factor! Hearing, as in smell, is interpreted from external information as well as internal Oh, that texture! information. We hear sounds externally as Everything we put in our mouth has a feel. sound waves that are collected in the ear There is the feel of the breast, bottle, finger, and directed to touch the ear drum. Sound spoon, fork, cup and straw and the texture waves are turned into vibrations that are from the liquid or food. And food has a feel. transmitted to the inner ear and cochlea for interpretation. This sound can be We describe a continuum of textures as considered touch from a distance as the babies transition from liquids to purees to wave touches the ear drum. We know many mashed foods and solids. However, within children who sound sensitive or sound and each of these descriptors, there are many touch sensitive. It is interesting how many more texture sensation variations that touch sensitive children are also sound children interpret as they learn to like, or sensitive. This external hearing process not like, new foods. In Japan, there are 408 hears the sound of the crisp of a potato food texture words and in the US there are chip or juicy crunch of an apple or celery. 78! We usually, however only consider a However, there is also sound generated handful to texture word options with from within the mouth as food is chewed children. Think about how the textures of and moved around the mouth. lumpy, chunky slippery, viscous, dense, runny, scattery, meltable, crispy, airy, The internal sounds comes from the sounds coarse, grainy, juicy, and stiff also we hear from within the mouth due to the contribute to our enjoyment or further proximity of the jaw, throat and mouth to complicate a worry about texture for the hearing apparatus and the bones of the children who have challenges with their skull. Internal chewing sounds are amplified sensory enjoyment of foods! Authors through bone conduction or bone

transmission. Most of us do not notice or sandwich cut in a rectangle instead of a can easily ignore these sounds. Sometimes triangle, or plate of elbow macaroni instead surprise sound or crunch adds to our food of a spirals can end the meal right there! enjoyment, BUT for some children the Worried eaters can become visual NOISE of food can be problematic! detectives sleuthing out the tiniest change in their visual food expectations as they Looking at food is a preview determine if they are going to eat any food We learn so much about food from seeing offered. Vision counts. it! We get a preview, a rehearsal, of the Continua meal and visually decide if the food on our plate is appealing, whether it is familiar or The sensations of eating are key to food unfamiliar, whether it fits into our enjoyment. When children do not enjoy the categories of personal preference. Some specific sensations, they will reject food enjoy the experience of eating at a fancy offered and can learn to be worried about restaurant and appreciating the artistic mealtimes and the offer of any new foods. arrangement of the gourmet food. This In order to reduce the worry and stress of visual attraction can entice us into the meal. mealtimes we recommend starting from We have experiences of having a new food SAFE. What foods are safe, familiar and presented that does not appeal to us at all trusted? What foods are okay NOW? And, visually. Vision can be the traffic patrol on how can we help the child tip toe towards a whether we even want the food near our new food smell, taste, texture, sound or mouth! sight?

Children learn a lot about mealtimes We consider each sensation along a graded through their eyes. They learn about continuum of complexity. Each child’s utensils, food differences, visual texture interest in that sensation is somewhere on differences, and the pace of presentation. that continuum of tiny steps. By thinking They see the feeder and can feel the continua we are consciously breaking down feeder’s pressure from the body language, the steps to success into tiny achievable, the size of the mouthful, the lean of the less stressful stretches towards the goal of grown up, and the persistence of the offer. more developmentally appropriate foods Through grown up body language, children and expanded food enjoyment. Sensations can be more, or less comfortable with the motivate children towards or away from the meal. meal. When they find enjoyment with sensations, they WANT to come back. Some children who have feeding challenges can be extra sensitive about the tiniest of Check out this continuum of sensory food visual difference in their foods. An extra properties found in Anxious Eaters, Anxious brown piece of toast, a random raisin in the Mealtimes by Marsha Dunn Klein. Where is oatmeal, or the apple that has green skin the child on each continuum? What would instead of red skin can be enough for a be a tiny next step for that child? mealtime meltdown. A peanut butter

SENSORY CONTINUUM

DILUTE SMELL CONCENTRATED

DILUTE TASTE CONCENTRATED

MILD TASTE SPICY

COLD TEMPERATURE WARM

DRY MELTABLES TEXTURE HARD CHEWABLES

LIQUID TEXTURE PUREE

WET TEXTURE DRY

THIN PUREE TEXTURE THICK PUREE

PUREE TEXTURE LUMPS

PREDICTABLE LUMPS TEXTURE

BINDER FOODS TEXTURE SCATTER FOODS

CRUMBS TEXTURE SOLIDS

And a continuum of bite sizes from tiny to And this continuum of crumb choices as large! Some children are only comfortable tiny tastes and smaller textures. Crumbs with the tiniest of tastes and others stuff can add small or large texture to a food. their mouths and need to learn to They can be ON a spoonful of puree, under comfortably handle smaller bites. Each it or on the side to support small sensory child can be somewhere on this continuum. changes as well as small oral motor challenges. They can be a bridge to solids and to flavor changes.

understand each sensation and how it works to allow or block enjoyment. By understanding the gradation of each sensation, we can offer opportunities in tiny achievable, less stressful ways for children.

References

Flavor : The Science of our Most Neglected Sense. Bob Holmes . 2017

Mouthfeel: How Texture Makes Taste. Ole G. Mouritsen and Klavs Strybaek .2017

Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why it Matters. Gordon Sheperd. 2017

Taste What You’re Mission: The Passionate Eater’s Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good. Barbara Stuckey, 2012 Those of us supporting children to make © Get Permission 2019 developmentally appropriate sensory transitions in eating need to fully