Liquid and soft-food nutritional formulations are highly palatable to consumers. However, their rapid emptying from the stomach and absorption can result in large fluctuations in blood glucose levels and limited satiating power. Such effects are detrimental to cognitive performance, physical performance and potentially long-term health (e.g., metabolic consequence of poor glucose control, development of overweight and obesity).
The consumption of liquid or soft foods that restructure in the stomach into gels offers one way slow down energy release from nutritional products and provide sustained feelings of fullness for consumers. To date, lack of effective technologies has limited progress in this exciting area of self-structuring nutritional products.
Gellan Gum can provide a solution:
It transforms liquid and soft-food formulations into nutritional products that self-structure in the acidic environment of the stomach.
Benefits of the products with gellan gum
•Controlled energy release from nutritional products
•Improved appetite control from nutritional formulations
•Gellan gum has been approved for use in food manufacturing by FDA and JEFCA.
Gellan gums are polymers of a tetrasaccharide which consists of two residues of D-glucose and one of each residue of L-rhamnose and D-glucuronic acid. The gum is a naturally occurring capsular polysaccharide produced by a bacterium, Sphingomonas elodea. It is available in two forms: the native or high acyl (HA) form which comprises two acyl substituents, acetate and glycerate. Both substituents are located on the same glucose residue and, on average, there is one glycerate per repeat unit and one acetate per every two repeat units. A second, low acyl (LA) form is commercially available. The acyl groups have been removed to produce a linear repeat unit substantially lacking in both groups.
Low acyl gellan gums are particularly advantageous because they are gell-able in the presence of an acid. The stomach contents of the typical person are highly acidic. Accordingly, the acidic content of the stomach can be used to gel the gellan gum. This means that products containing the gum can be provided as, for example, liquid or soft food form, which is highly palatable to consumers, and then will gel in situ within the stomach. Our recent findings suggest including gellan gum in such nutritional formulations effectively improves satiety and also controls nutrient release from energy-containing solutions in vitro and in vivo.
