Оleogels – Types, properties and their food, and other applications

Abstract

This review aims to reveal a modality for transforming liquid vegetable oils into semi-solid forms as their mechanical properties can vary from viscous and thick liquids to hard and elastic solids. The edible oleogels are an alternative replacer of undesirable trans and saturated fats. They are porous materials with self-assembled and three-dimensional gel network. Large amount of a continuous edible liquid-oil phase can be entrapped physically and stored in this gel structure. The bigels are a variety of oleogels and they represent two-phase emulsions, containing both oil-based oleogels and water-based hydrogels. The edible oleogels are composed by a structurant substance of food grade in a low concentration, below 10 %. Some of their featured properties are: (i) improved viscosity, spreadability and some of them are semisolid, translucent with semi-crystalline structure; (ii) high physical and structural stability combined with high oil binding capacity; (iii) high-temperature stability, but some of them are thermo-reversible; (iv) higher oxidative stability of oil and the chemical stability of active lipophilic compounds incorporated; (v) microbiological stability. Their more remarkable food applications are chocolates, processed meat products, margarine spreads and shortening. Their combination with other promising techniques raises up new perspectives for structural engineering of foods. There are also outlined other applications of oleogels in cosmetic and pharmaceutical formulations; for engineering purposes and environmental protection. The general limitations, some challenges in the development of new products, their commercialization are also divulged.