Abstract
The amount of food thickener that needs to be added in food is very small, usually a few thousandths, but it can effectively and economically improve the stability of the food system.
Food thickeners can effectively improve the quality and performance of food, not only to achieve the effect of thickening but also as stabilizers, emulsifiers, film-forming agents, gelling agents, suspending agents, and foaming agents widely used in the food industry.
Dairy beverage thickeners and stabilizers in liquid milk are increasingly playing an active and important role.
Beverage Thickeners & Stabilizers in Dairy
In dairy beverages, beverage thickeners have the following roles and advantages:
- It can increase the viscosity
- Interaction with emulsifiers
- interaction with milk proteins
- Its salt components have a stabilizing effect
- Synergistic effect with other colloids
- It can make dairy beverages taste and look better
Although the proportion of food thickeners added to food is small, it can effectively improve the quality and performance of food, not only to achieve the effect of thickening but also can have the role of stabilizer, emulsifier, film-forming agent, gelling agent, suspending agent, foaming agent, etc., so it is widely used in the food industry.
Food thickeners and stabilizers are playing an increasingly active and important role in liquid milk.
It can be said that without thickeners, emulsifiers, and stabilizers, much fancy liquid milk would be difficult to produce.
Examples include cocoa milk, juice milk, pasteurized yogurt, various stirred yogurts, various active milk, etc.
Even in the past, it was thought that pasteurised milk and UHT milk did not need any stabilizers added, now many manufacturers are using additives such as thickeners and stabilizers, in order to improve the taste, flavor, and stability of the product.
4 Important Roles of Beverage Thickeners in Dairy Beverages
1. Beverage thickeners can increase viscosity
The most intuitive effect of using thickeners is to increase the product viscosity.
With the increase of viscosity, to a certain extent, it can relieve the gravitational sinking effect of particles.
However, the viscosity of liquid milk cannot be increased indefinitely, which will seriously affect the product quality and taste.
2. The role of thickeners and milk protein
Some food thickeners can combine with milk proteins to a certain extent to play a role in colloidal protection. For example, carrageenan and casein have certain reactivity, so they can be well used in dairy products such as cocoa milk; and then propylene glycol alginate (PGA) has good reactivity with casein under acidic conditions so that it can combine with casein under acidic conditions to form a hydrophilic protective layer.
3. The salt component of the thickener has a stabilizing effect
Salt components, especially phosphate and citrate, have a certain stabilizing effect on milk proteins.
For example, in neutral pure milk products, phosphate or citrate can increase the stability of milk proteins to a certain extent to heat treatment. In addition, to some extent salts also alter the thickener molecules and emulsifier molecules, affecting their stabilizing effect.
4. Synergistic effect between thickening agents
Carrageenan and locust bean gum, xanthan gum and locust bean gum, tragacanth gum and sodium alginate, tragacanth gum and xanthan gum all have synergistic effects of mutual synergism.
Using the synergistic effect between various thickening agents, the compound formulation method can produce numerous kinds of compound gums to meet the different needs of liquid milk production and can reach the lowest dosage level.
Development prospects of food thickeners
China’s food thickener market is an emerging market and a sunrise industry.
Although the market scale is relatively small compared with the population, with the improvement of people’s living standard, consumers have higher and higher requirements for food quality, appearance and flavor, etc. As a common food additive to improve the characteristics of food, the development momentum of food thickeners is very good, and the growth space is also very huge, as long as the government appropriately supports and enterprises themselves strengthen the reserve of technical strength and investment.
Utilising high technology to develop a safe and healthy, low-cost, high-quality new food thickener will have a broad market prospect.
Introduction to Hydrocolloids in Beverages | Beverage Stabilizers
In recent years, the speed of beverage innovation is fast, and many new and interesting nutritious and delicious beverages are emerging in the market, so the application of hydrocolloids in beverages will certainly be more and more.