Cereals & Grains Association
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Advances in the use of starch for imparting fat-like texture to foods
Y. YAO (1), X. Peng (2) (1) Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, U.S.A.; (2) Purdue University, , U.S.A..

Excessive intake of dietary fats is associated with the development of cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and diabetes. However, the removal of fats from foods usually results in products with significantly different textures and sensory attributes from those of the original products, which may adversely affect consumer acceptability. To address this problem, fat replacers have been developed to compensate for the loss of sensory qualities in low-fat or non-fat foods. A number of carbohydrate fat replacers have been reported. In general, these fat replacers have lower energy density and are added in the low/non-fat foods to provide the texture characteristics similar to those of the original whole-fat products. Starches and other hydrocolloids, such as cellulose derivatives and inulin, are frequently evaluated as fat replacers in various types of food. In this talk, we will discuss our work of using starches as milk fat replacer to improve the physical and sensory qualities of strained non-fat yogurt. The non-fat and whole-fat strained yogurts were used as controls. Rheology tests were used to characterize the flow and viscoelastic properties of yogurts supplemented with starch, thus to predict the sensory outcomes of various formulations. In addition, the microscale structures of yogurt gel networks were imaged using Cryo-SEM and correlated with their rheological properties. Based on the physical information, the sensory qualities of starch-added yogurts will be evaluated for assessing their consumer acceptability.