KEVYTTUOTE

Structure engineering concepts for light products

Consortium Leader: Senior Research Scientist Raija Lantto, VTT (www.vtt.fi)
 
Other group leaders:
Professor Maija Tenkanen, University of Helsinki, Department of Applied Chemistry and Microbiology (www.helsinki.fi)
Professor Johanna Buchert, VTT (www.vtt.fi)

Other persons involved in the project:
Senior Research Scientist Markus Linder, VTT (www.vtt.fi)
Research Scientist Riitta Partanen and Arja Paananen, VTT (www.vtt.fi)

ABSTRACT

Novel methods for weight control are constantly required by the consumers due to increased obesity problem in the Western world. Food industry is therefore searching for technologies to produce good quality low-calorie light products to answer these needs. These low energy density products are able to increase satiety feeling. The energy density in turn is influenced by the air and water content of the product as well as the amount of nutrients and dietary fibre in the product. To obtain these products with good sensory properties and stability is, however, very demanding.

The objective of the project is to develop technologies to produce stable foam structures and highly viscous protein-fibre mixtures with good sensory properties to be used in milk, cereal and meat based applications.  The miscibility of mixed polymers will be improved by hydrolytic enzymes and their stability improved by cross-linking enzymes. As a result novel high fibre and protein content products can be manufactured. The other alternative to obtain light products is to manufacture food foams.  Foams are very unstable systems. The stability of foam structures will be improved using cross-linking enzymes and functionalized proteins or hydrocolloids as tools.   During the project the basic phenomena are first investigated in model systems by combining the modern biotechnical process concepts to advanced surface chemical and physicochemical analytical techniques, where after the most potential systems will be further developed to model product level with appropriate sensory and technological characterizations. The project is divided into two main approaches: 1) improvement of the foam properties with functional proteins, hydrocolloids and cross-linking enzymes and 2) improvement of the properties of high consistency fibre-protein mixtures by tailored bioprocessing.

The project thus contributes to the objectives of ELVIRA research programme by developing natural food processing concepts based on tailored bioprocesses to improve the quality of weight control products. Special emphasis is put onto the basic mechanistic level research, in which understanding on the structural issues is investigated at chemical and macromolecular level and this information is further fed into model product level. 

The project is expected to result in novel concepts for production of weight control products.  The low-calorie product market offers substantial business opportunities to the food and food ingredient industry.

Key words:   protein, foam, stability, cross-linking enzyme, weight control