Sounds Hard, Sounds Soft, Sounds Tasty, Sounds Crisp

Professor Malcolm Povey’s inaugural lecture “Sounds Hard, Sounds Soft, Sounds Tasty, Sounds Crisp – A Working Life in Ultrasound”, looked at sound as a very important but little known way of understanding food.

The sounds it makes in our mouths when it is eaten are an important aspect of how we assess food. The intensity of the sounds made by crisp foods are so great that your hearing would be destroyed if they were sustained. If the food does not produce a very distinct crisp sound 'signal', then you will not think it is crisp.

From the freshness of eggs through margarine hardness to mayonnaise.

From chocolate through fruit drinks to hand cream.

Sounds, both within the range of hearing and outside, gives us new insights into foods.

Sound can be used to 'see' objects over an enormous range of sizes. Bats use ultrasound to see their prey, small insects in flight. Ultrasound can also be used to 'see' objects millions of times smaller than this. In this way we can show that nano-particles have existed in food since humans began to drink milk.

Please contact the Food Chain CIC for further details.