44E-23 |
Impregnation techniques for the incorporation of calcium to apple matrix |
S. M. ALZAMORA, S. Anino, and D. M. Salvatori. Dept. de Industrias, Univ. de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Ciudad Universitaria, Nuņez, Buenos Aires, 1428, Argentina Most people know the role that calcium plays in disease prevention and health promotion, and the negative impact that deficiencies of this nutrient can have on important body`s functions. In the last years, there has been a growing interest in the design of the so-called functional foods with added physiologically-active food components (PAC) in order to facilitate or to increase the consumption of a specific vitamin or mineral that may provide an additional health benefit beyond the traditional nutrients they contain. In porous foods, such as fruits and vegetables, the PAC may be incorporated by impregnation soaking processes, where operating pressure is one of the factors affecting the composition and the structural characteristics of the final product. The objetive of this work was to compare two impregnation techniques (vacuum and atmospheric) for the incorporation of calcium to apple tissue on the basis of vegetal matrix properties (effective porosity, impregnated liquid fraction, texture) and matrices-calcium interaction. Experiments were conducted at room temperature by immersion of cylindrical samples in agitated isotonic glucose aqueous solutions containing calcium salts (5.24 % p/p). A mixture of calcium gluconate and calcium lactate was chosen because of its relatively high solubility at room temperature and the neutral taste imparted to the fruit. For vacuum treatment, a pulse of 10 min was applied at 50 mmHg. Atmospheric impregnation was carried out until the equilibrium between fruit and syrup was reached. At the end of each treatment, samples were analyzed for calcium content, textural properties (compression test)and structural modifications (TEM). For both impregnation techniques, the calcium consumed in 200 g of fruit ranges from 17 to 21 % of the recommended daily intake according to Mercosur (DDR). The results obtained suggest that vegetal matrices can be used to develop new functional foods with PAC added by impregnation processes.
Session 44E, Nutraceuticals & Functional Foods
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