Statistical Laws for Food Fragmentation by Human Mastication

Fragment-size distribution has been studied experimentally by masticating raw carrot. For a few chews a single lognormal distribution well fits the entire region for masticated food fragments. Furthermore, the fragment-size distribution changes from a single lognormal structure to a double-size-group structure of lognormal with a power-law tail as the number of chews increases. The most of the fragments belong to the smaller size region characterized by the lognormal distribution, whereas the larger size region showed a power-law distribution. The excellent data fitting by the lognormal and power-law distributions implies that two functions of mastication, a sequential fragmentation with cascade and randomness, and a lower threshold for fragment size, affect the size distribution of masticated food fragments.