There’s news about soggy-cereal research — a study called “Crunchiness Loss and Moisture Toughening in Puffed Cereals and Snacks,” by Micha Peleg, published in the Journal of Food Science, epub July 29, 2015.
Peleg, at the University of Massachusetts, builds on the research of — among others — 1995 Ig Nobel Nutrition Prize winners D.M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and A.C. Smith of the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK. Georget, Parker, and Smith were awarded that prize for their rigorous analysis of soggy breakfast cereal, called “A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes“. The Georget/Parker/Smith paper was published in the journal Powder Technology in 1994. (That particular Ig Nobel Prize drew an unexpected reaction from the then-chief scientific advisor to the British government.)
Peleg reports, in his new study:
Here’s video of other, unrelated investigators investigating soggy chicharon:
Here’s further detail, about force and strain in cheese balls, from Peleg’s study:
Alexandra Ossola reports on the report, in Popular Science, under the slightly exaggerated headline “SCIENCE FINALLY UNDERSTANDS HOW CEREAL GETS SOGGY“.
(Thanks to Jennifer Ouellette for bringing this to our attention.)
Independently, an inventor named Michael Roberts developed a cereal bowl that is said, commercially, to prevent cereal from becoming soggy. Inventor Roberts and his colleagues advertise this bowl under the brand name Obol. Here is their story, as told by them or persons acting at their behest, in the form of a commercial that does not explore so very much the time element that inevitably figures into the story of soggification: