M. Crowe
Ingredion,
United States
Keywords: Plant-Based Food Ingredients
Summary:
Advanced analytical chemistry approaches have been used to probe the molecular structure of food ingredients with the goal of understanding of the relationships between molecular structure, ingredient function, and production process. In this presentation, advanced analytical techniques and their application to the research and development of food ingredients will be described. One example will describe the use of infrared spectroscopy for real-time monitoring of plant-based fiber processing. In this example, infrared spectroscopy was used to probe changes to the fiber molecular structure over time, to determine reaction completion. A second example will describe the use of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to build understanding of the relationship between plant-based protein chemistry and flavor. A GC-MS methodology was developed to monitor volatile compounds representative of plant-based protein materials of interest, and the relationship between volatiles and sensory evaluation were investigated. Finally, the application of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to elucidate plant-based protein structure will be discussed. The use of LC-high resolution MS to evaluate intact plant-based proteins as well as those subjected to enzyme hydrolysis will be highlighted. The role and application of advanced statistical analysis in analytical chemistry of food ingredients will be discussed with some of the above examples. This presentation will describe approaches by which molecular structure data can be obtained for plant-based food ingredients, along with strategies to make the most of the complex data sets that result. The goal of all of this is to build knowledge and advance development of plant-based food ingredients.