Surfactant and starch can form complex, improve food structure, improve food quality and prolong shelf life. Recently, many food preservation patents centered on monoacylglycerol of caproic acid/caprylic acid/decanoic acid have been applied for using low-carbon fatty acids as monoacylglycerol. For example, monoglyceride can form a complex with starch and play a softening role in bread. There are a lot of hydrogen bonds between natural starch molecules to form small particles, which makes it difficult for amylase to enter and digest. At a proper temperature and in the presence of water, starch granules absorb water and expand, breaking hydrogen bonds and forming digestible expanded granules, namely α-granules, which are not easy to store. Adding glycosyl ester/glycerol fatty acid ester can protect the α particles of starch, thus prolonging the shelf life of food. For example, 2.5% sucrose ester can prolong the shelf life of fat bread by 5 ~ 6 days; When steaming rice, adding 2% sucrose ester can increase the volume of rice by 20% and extend the shelf life from 4 hours to 48 hours. In baked goods, the functions of whey protein include water retention/adhesion/plasticity/foaming/emulsification/swelling, and of course nutrition and flavor. Recently, CharlieMoon of Flower Industry Co., Ltd. thinks that whey protein has a low pH value and can be used as a preservative for bread products, which can meet all natural requirements without adding preservatives.
2 the application prospect of surfactants in food industry
Surfactants are widely used in food industry. Adding surfactants to some foods can greatly improve processing conditions, improve product quality and prolong food shelf life. For example, the production of ice cream, without surfactant, can not control the quality structure of products, can not improve the expansion rate; Another example is microcapsule technology. Without the good emulsification/film-forming performance of surfactants, embedding is difficult. Generally speaking, high-quality food processing is inseparable from the application of surfactants.
The wide application of surfactants has greatly promoted the development of food additive industry. At present, the total annual demand for edible emulsifiers in the world is about 250 thousand tons, of which monoglyceride is the largest, followed by sucrose ester. The annual output of thickener in the world is about 2.4 million tons (1985). There are more than 200 manufacturers producing water-soluble protein whey products in the United States, which are widely used in meat processing and baking products. At present, the world whey protein output reaches 700,000 tons. With the continuous improvement of people's living standards, people's demand for food nutrition/quality and variety diversification is increasing, and the application of surfactants in food industry will be further developed.