Causal Discovery Between Physical Features of Foods and Texture Perception

Abstract

Food texture perception is an important determinant of food palatability and product quality. This study explored the applicability of DirectLiNGAM to directional relationships between instrumental texture features and the sensory perceptions of sakusaku and karikari. Baked cookie formulations and commercially available snacks were measured using a magnetic texture sensor, and seven force-derived features were paired with sensory ratings at the sample-group level. Edge stability was evaluated using 1000 bootstrap resamples. In the controlled cookie dataset, hardness and brittleness showed stable candidate direct effects on both sensory descriptors, with opposite signs for sakusaku and karikari. The commercial-product dataset produced more heterogeneous structures, reflecting differences in composition, geometry, and fracture behavior. Because the analysis used different samples for sensory and instrumental measurements and included parameters derived from the second compression, the identified directions should be interpreted as exploratory causal hypotheses rather than universal physical causality. The proposed framework may complement correlation and regression analyses by generating testable hypotheses about instrumental determinants of perceived food texture.