Recent advances in the stabilization of emulsion-based food structures allow the use of healthier ingredients while maintaining appealing tastes and textures.

Eric Dickinson, University of Leeds, UK, suggests that there is considerable research interest in finding alternatives to conventional functional ingredients such as fat, refined sugar and salt, resulting in the development of new colloidal structures. These include particle stabilized emulsions using micro- and nano-particles such as hydrophobically modified starch granules, emulsion gels using charged polysaccharide molecules and aerated emulsions that utilize proteins to stabilize air bubbles.

In addition to maintaining emulsion stability, key concerns for food colloid research include the taste and mouth-feel of the products as well as the ingredients’ ability to be released and digested at the appropriate point in the GI tract. Numerical simulation and modeling can be useful tools for predicting the behavior of these structures in the body, but need to be developed further in order to be reliable representations of these effects.

• Stabilizing emulsion-based colloidal structures with mixed food ingredients,
  Eric Dickinson,
  J. Sci. Food Agricult. 2012.
  DOI: 10.1002/jsfa.6013