Chewing is essential to the sustaining of life in humans, as it is the first step in the body's digestive process. Mastication's primary function is to increase the surface area of ingested food to allow for more efficient chemical breakdown, which largely takes place after food materials have left the mouth.

Mechanics of mastication are difficult to investigate, in part because the tissues that make up the jaw are different from those in other joints of the body. While most synovial joints in the body consist of bones constructed through cartilage ossification, "the bones of the TMJ [temporomandibular joints] are dermal or membrane bones... formed directly from intramembranous centers of ossification". This and the lack of hyaline cartilage on articular surfaces mean that the jaw is biomechanically unique to study.

Additionally, the inaccessibility of the joints involved in chewing makes it difficult to validate and expand on biomechanical models of the jaw. The purpose of this abstract is to briefly review seven scholarly articles that have examined the biomechanics of mastication.

This abstract will consider: 1) anatomy of the jaw, 2) kinematics of mastication, 3) biomechanical relevance, and 4) application of findings.