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If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.Abstract A marked increase in the incidence of microbial food poisoning parallels increasing scientific and public concern about microbiological hazards. This literature review highlights the important pathogens involved in the increase and issues salient to developing effective riskbenefit communication with the public about microbial food poisoning. Research into public perceptions of microbiological food hazards is reviewed, together with public attitudes towards one of the technologies that could combat food poisoning: food irradiation. Suggestions for reducing the incidence of microbial food poisoning through effective communication strategies are provided.The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

This paper describes a method for obtaining detailed information about the velocities, directions and relative forces involved in mastication, and how these change throughout the chewing sequence, from combined electromyograph and kinematic records in human subjects. Differences in the temporal breakdown patterns of apple, carrot and biscuit are highlighted. Mastication of apple and carrot relied on vertical compression for each chew, with decreasing effort applied over the course of the chewing sequence. Differences between these products were related principally to the chewing effort exerted. For biscuit, compression was the predominant mechanism of breakdown in early chews but this was transferred to a shear action over the course of the sequence.

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Nineteen ordinary consumers assessed the hardness, crunchiness and crumbliness of a series of biscuits exhibiting texture differences. Chewing patterns were obtained from all of the subjects eating the same samples by simultaneous recording of masticatory muscle activity and jaw movement. There was a strongly significant inverse correlation between hardness and crumbliness and weaker but significant correlations between hardness and crunchiness (positive) and between crunchiness and crumbliness (negative). The hardness/crumbliness dimension was well represented by several instrumental measures of the mechanical properties of the samples and by several descriptors assessed by a trained sensory panel. Crunchiness gave ambiguous relationships with these objective measures. Chewing data indicated an increase in masticatory muscle effort between the first 5 chews and the next 5 chews with a subsequent decline in effort to the end of the chewing sequence. This was associated with a transfer of effort from a principally compressive force during the initial chews, to a mixture of compressive (fracture) force and grinding (shear) force during later chews. Mastication of the harder and crunchier samples required more total chewing effort. Principal component analysis demonstrated a relationship between sensory hardness (and conversely, crumbliness) and the chewing effort during the first 5 chews, and between crunchiness and the chewing effort during the subsequent 5 chews. This study indicates the importance of the temporal changes occurring in the sample during mastication to perception of textural characteristics.