Soft Matter Physics-Driven Design of Texture-Modified Foods for Geriatric Nutrition.

Abstract

A soft matter physics framework offers a systematic approach to designing texture-modified foods (TMFs) that can improve swallowing safety, nutritional adequacy, and acceptability in older adults with dysphagia, malnutrition, and sarcopenia. This narrative review synthesizes experimental and clinical studies published from 2020 onwards that treat TMFs as soft-matter systems, including gels, emulsions, and composite biopolymer networks used in geriatric nutrition and dysphagia care. Evidence on rheology, tribology, microstructure, particle size, protein-polysaccharide and emulsion gels, three-dimensional (3D) food printing, and thermal and non-thermal processing is integrated to relate material parameters to swallowing safety and nutritional outcomes. Across studies, safer boluses are consistently soft, shear-thinning, cohesive, low-adhesive and sufficiently extensible, with quantitative windows of viscosity, yield stress, viscoelastic moduli, extensional viscosity and friction offering better prediction of swallowability than qualitative texture levels alone. Protein-polysaccharide gels, emulsion-filled matrices, plant-based networks and 3D-printed structures can be engineered to meet standardized dysphagia diet levels while increasing protein density, hydration, and delivery of bioactive compounds; processing conditions and particle-size control further tune tenderness, cohesion, digestibility and nutrient bioaccesibility. A physics-aware soft-matter approach thus provides actionable design rules linking formulation and processing to bolus flow, lubrication and sensory properties, enabling TMFs that are safer, more palatable, and more nutritious for older adults, although phenotype-specific targets and long-term clinical trials remain important gaps for future research on healthy ageing. Unlike prior reviews that emphasize either clinical dysphagia management or processing technologies in isolation, this work uniquely integrates rheology, tribology, microstructure, particle size, 3D printing, and thermal/non-thermal processing under a single soft-matter physics design framework, and translates these soft-matter descriptors into quantitative, phenotype-aware engineering windows for safer and more nutritious geriatric TMFs.