Summary Wooden breast myopathy affects the quality of fresh and processed chicken breast muscle. The objective of this study was to construct a classification method by instrumental stress, and the effects of wooden breast myopathy on meat quality and oral processing property, and was to explore correlations between stress and oral processing parameters. The severity of wooden breast myopathy was highly correlated to fillet weight (R2 = 0.740), thickness (R2 = 0.826) and hardness (R2 = 0.803) (P < 0.01). The 3D scatter model based on stress is robust and reliable to classify the fillets into four categories (normal, mild, moderate and severe wooden breast fillets), avoiding manual grading. Moisture, fat, collagen, pH, drip loss, cooking loss, thawing loss, purge loss, hardness, gumminess and chewiness significantly increased with the severity of wooden breast myopathy, whereas fat, ash and water/salt‐soluble protein contents significantly decreased (P < 0.05). Shear force reached the maximum (36.32 N) when this myopathy was moderate. The myopathy led to an increase in masseter activity and the particle size of the bolus. Significantly higher correlations between stress, Dx(50) (R2 = 0.790), Dx(90) (R2 = 0.771) and D[4,3] (R2 = 0.797) were found (P < 0.01). This study also showed that jaw movement and muscle activity could be used to understand the links between physical property and orally sensory property.

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