Kana Ioku

Texture descriptive terms in Japanese were collected and validated. Five hundred and ninety-nine words were obtained from an open-ended questionnaire distributed to 116 food specialists in Sendai, northern area (25 individuals), Tokyo, central area (29), Osaka, western area (32) and Kagoshima, southern area (30). Out of these 599 words 332 terms were selected in a 2-day roundtable discussion made by 4 researchers. To the 332 terms added were 94 terms that have been collected from dictionaries, technical books on food texture and research papers about food texture. Thus, a list of 426 terms was presented to 55 selected assessors who had some experience of research on texture. They were asked whether these terms correctly expressed food texture. Then the data were evaluated by 4 experts who had been engaged in research on food texture or rheology for a long time. As a result of deletion and addition, 445 terms were obtained as a texture descriptive language. About 70% of the terms are onomatopoeic words. This shows onomatopoeic words play an important role in texture description in Japanese. Compared with the data taken from questionnaires in 1968, some new onomatopoeic words such as "mochi-mochi" and "puru-puru" are included in the list.

Recently, much attention has been directed to problems of the environmental pollution. The present investigation was attempted to obtain a basic information about a possibility of the replacement of aluminium laminate film to plastic film which was more easy disposal treatment. Then, the effects on the stability of packed ground sesame seeds under ultraviolet light (UV) exposure (wavelength; 365nm), were compared among several packaging materials of different oxygen permeabilities and different 365nm UV absorbances. Against the oxidation of the sesame seed's oil, the plastic films cutting 365nm UV had a little protective function and the aluminium laminate film had the best one. On the protection of the roasted sesame aroma, the aluminium laminate film had also the best effect and the plastic films cutting 365nm UV had slightly the one. The plastic film with the permeability of 365nm UV brought the oxidative deterioration of the aroma. Volatile compounds growing from the clear plastic films under UV exposure, weaken the sesame aroma. So, the aluminium laminate film was the best packaging material.