Polysaccharides as food system stabilizers

Abstract

From the point of view of the modern healthy nutrition concept, dietary fiber (DF) occupies a leading position among functional ingredients. Expanding the range of food products with the help of DF can strengthen public health and human immune response. Insoluble natural polysaccharides (which make up the main group of polysaccharides) serve as an alternative to surfactants as stabilizers for food emulsions. The quality of ready-to-use food products such as ketchups and mayonnaises deteriorates during long-term refrigeration due to changes in physical and chemical properties. The present research aims to justify the use of disaggregated bacterial cellulose (BC) as a food system stabilizer for mayonnaise sauces and tomato ketchups. It is a unique structurizer of food systems due to its properties: high water-retaining and lipid-binding capacity, fibrillar structure, and lack of toxicity, hence the commercial interest in it as a food additive and functional ingredient. Using scanning probe microscopy, the sizes of BC fibrils were determined: length > 10 μm, width 100-150 nm. Physicochemical parameters of mayonnaise sauce and ketchup samples containing BC were analyzed and compared. The impact the amount of BC has on the organoleptic characteristics of ketchup and mayonnaise was determined.