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EU Researchers Develop Enzymes to Improve Food Texture and Quality

Posted on: Thursday, 9 February 2006, 15:00 CST

A three-year European Union study has developed novel enzymes that are thought to improve of food texture and quality in low-fat and low-calorie products.

Enzymatic modification of food components is used as a natural way to tailor food texture as it reduces the amount of additives and food ingredients required to obtain food products with good sensory properties.

So-called cross-linking enzymes can be exploited in the production of dairy, meat and baking products to improve texture, water-binding and stability. Microbial transglutaminase is the most widely used enzyme for food structure modification. It can be used for enhancing bread volume and texture in yoghurt, ice cream, tofu and cheese.

The scientists in the EU-backed CROSSENZ Project focused their study on novel oxidative enzymes that are capable of linking food biopolymers in a different way to obtain totally new food textures

Novel enzymes have been obtained from edible plants and from natural microbes that are thought to be able to improve food products' gel strength, thermal stability, viscosity, volume and water-holding capacity. The technology can applied to ice creams, yoghurts, cheese, jams, margarine, chocolate and certain fine foods.

The scientists involved in the study believe large-scale production would be feasible by using either microbial or plant systems or by extracting the enzymes from vegetable by-products.

The study also looked into consumer attitudes towards the new technologies. Attitudes towards the use of enzymes in food production in general were found to be fairly neutral, whereas attitudes towards use of GM technology in food production and towards enzymes produced by the use of modern production technologies were more negative.

Consumers who tasted products that were improved by using enzymes, including enzymes produced using modern production technologies were positive towards the developed cross-linking concepts. The same group also showed more positive attitudes towards the use of modern technology in food production and in enzyme production compared to a control group that did not taste the products with improved properties.

The novel enzyme technology enables improved textural product features especially to low-calorie, low-fat products. The project consortium said it aimed to develop these concepts further for different product types.

Source: Datamonitor

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