Interests
My research is to try and understand the interplay between physiological, psychological and contextual factors in explaining eating behaviour and to use this information to support the development of innovative healthy food products.
Through this overarching area of interest a number of related lines of research have been undertaken:
a) Research addressing how consumers conceptualise healthy eating practices appears to have more recently made a paradigmatic shift towards qualitative research methods. Use of open-ended questioning and inductive, interpretive methods of enquiry to generate in-depth, contextually-derived information has been applied to investigate understandings about functional foods from older adult groups, adolescents and dieticians in different countries.
b) Same time measures of the dynamic sensory response, oral processing behaviour and time dependent acceptability of solid and semi-solid foods. This experimental work is now being expanded to investigate how to measure the hedonic responses (of novel food containing bioactive ingredients) over the eating process by measuring muscle activity associated with facial expressions using electromyography. Combining preference measures with sensory and oral processing data is a new and exciting research area because it enables the measurement of emotional processes without interrupting oral processing.
c) Investigating best practices for food businesses wanting to engage in functional food product development. This has included significant interaction in both the New Zealand and Singapore food industries incorporating a mixed methods approach.
d) Understanding the effect of physiological stresses on sensory evaluation e.g. via exercise, satiety and diet . This includes investigations into oral fat perception and the corresponding endocrine response.
RESEARCH SUPERVISION
ONGOING
PhD Co-supervisor for Steven Muir - The application of sensory and consumer science to help inform decision making in potato breeding. Funded by Interface Food and Drink.
PhD Co-supervisor for Dayna McCormick – Ministry of Business Innovation and Enterprise funded research in collaboration with Heilala Foods looking at effects of processing on vanilla flavour. Start date 2013 (Massey University, NZ)
COMPLETED
2016. MTech:: Kee Wen Jia. Effect of panel type and ethnicity on apples in Singapore using TDS. Funded by NZ Governement.
2017 PhD: Bei Li - Novel hedonic measures of food. (Massey University, NZ), vivia successfully completed.
2015 PhD: Hong Yan. Oral processing of foods. . Riddet Institute funded through Centre of Research Excellence funding. (Massey University, NZ.
2014: PhD: Rao Sanullah Khan . Motivation and selection of functional food ingredients (Massey University).
2014: PhD: Jean Ne Cheong. Relating sensory perception to chewing dynamics (Massey University).
2012: MTech: Wenjing Li: Investigating taste sensitivity and hormonal regulation (Massey University).
2002 PhD: Donglin Zhang, Study on Enzymatic Browning of Litchi Pericarp and Minimally Processed lettuce and its Control During Post-Harvest Storage,. (University of Lincolnshire and Humberside).
2001 PhD: Abdullah Oskuz,, Quality Indices of Rainbow Trout and Atlantic Mackerel: A Comparative Study, University of Lincolnshire and Humberside (University of Lincolnshore and Humberside).
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