Cereal & Baked Product Testing with the TA.XT2i Texture Analyzer

The TA.XT2i is used by many hundred companies in the cereal and baking industry throughout the USA, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia. No other instrument is close to its ease of use and in the specific probes, fixtures and test methods designed for the cereal and baking industry. We will be pleased to offer cereal industry reference lists upon request. Or just ask around among your colleagues already!

Texture Technologies Corp developed and taught the Industrial Texture Measurement short course for the American Association of Cereal Chemists; and the TA.XT2i Texture Analyzer is the instrument of choice at the American Institute of Baking.

The beauty of the TA.XT2i and TA.XTPlus systems are the ease of use and the extensive applications help available from Texture Technologies and Stable Micro Systems. Furthermore, as a testiment to its popularity, it has been the instrument most cited and used in research posters and presentations at the AACC's Annual Meeting for at least the last five years. Its use in posters presented at the IFT Annual Meeting is equally impressive.

Several other companies which sell texture analyzer-like instruments have copied our or SMS' fixtures and yet since they did not invent the fixtures they regularly offer misguided advice to their clients with regard to sample handling issues or with the recommended test protocols. We routinely receive service calls from their clients requesting information on how the tests are actually supposed to be run.

Perhaps an example of how other instrument companies may not offer the best help for food texture testing is the article "Using Instrumental Texture Analysis to Ensure Product Quality" written by Richard McManus of Instron Corp in the Nov/Dec 2001 issue of Cereal Foods World. The article had numerous examples of how Instron does not understand the cereal industry's existing test methods and how its materials science approach is misguided in foods. The consequences of the article will be food scientists conducting tests with poor results, and who may then wrongly conclude that texture analysis cannot help solve their problems. Click on this link to see a detailed critique of the article.