Innovation in low-fat emulsions: a key step towards healthier foods

CLARA TALENS, researcher at New Foods

As the demand for healthier food products continues to grow, reducing the fat content of products is a key challenge for the food industry. Maintaining sensory qualities such as creaminess and taste is essential for consumer acceptance.

Low fat emulsions

Low fat emulsions are used in the food industry to reduce the fat content while maintaining the sensory quality of the product. They are used in a wide range of products including processed meats (sausages and burgers), dairy (yoghurts and cheeses), dressings (mayonnaises and sauces), bakery (cookies and biscuits), ice cream and vegan products. These emulsions, based on vegetable oils, proteins and modified starches, preserve texture, creaminess and flavour while reducing saturated fat and calories.

These types of emulsions therefore have enormous potential in the food industry, so it is important to have good sensory evaluations to facilitate the launch process and ensure consumer acceptance.

Integrating sensory analysis into emulsion formulation

In collaboration with the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, we conducted a review of existing studies on the integration of sensory analysis in low-fat emulsion research. We looked at different types of emulsions, such as simple emulsions, gel emulsions and Pickering emulsions, using a variety of fat replacers, including vegetable oils, proteins and modified starches. The results have recently been published in the journal Food Science & Nutrition in an article entitled ‘Comprehensive Sensory Evaluation in Low‐Fat Emulsions: A Systematic Review of Diverse Food Applications‘.

The main conclusion is that very few studies include a rigorous sensory evaluation, only 6.6% of the more than 400 we analysed. This is an obstacle to improving products and ensuring that changes, such as fat reduction, do not have a negative impact on consumer perception.

There is also a need to standardise the methodology to be used in sensory analysis, as there is considerable variability in the methods used to assess sensory properties, making it difficult to compare studies and validate results.

Finally, it should be noted that some studies use unconventional ingredients such as egg protein microparticles and polysaccharide nanoparticles, which require further validation and sensory analysis.

Low-fat products will continue to gain market share, but in order to offer successful innovative solutions, it will be essential to have standardised, rigorous and as homogeneous as possible sensory evaluations to ensure that these products retain the desirable organoleptic characteristics that are essential for consumer acceptance.

Sensory evaluation of food products

Sensory evaluation of food
Sensory evaluation is a systematic and standardised process of measuring and analysing the sensory properties of a product using trained panels and scientific methods. This type of analysis focuses not only on general consumer perception, but breaks down sensory characteristics in a specific and quantifiable way.

This involves selecting and training a team of tasters with appropriate sensory sensitivity to ensure they are able to identify and rate attributes such as taste, texture, aroma, appearance and mouthfeel in an objective and consistent manner. Methods such as Quantitative Descriptive Analysis (QDA) are used to measure the intensity of attributes, hedonic scales to assess overall acceptability, discrimination tests to identify significant differences and tools such as Temporal Analysis (TDS) to assess the evolution of sensations during consumption. The tests are carried out under controlled conditions to avoid bias, using randomly coded samples. Finally, the results are statistically analysed to validate their repeatability and to correlate them with the physico-chemical parameters of the product.

AZTI can provide the expertise and resources to conduct comprehensive sensory evaluations, contributing to the creation of healthy, sustainable and sensorially appealing products through the development of standardised protocols, comprehensive consumer analysis and formulation innovation support.