Food Structure Engineering for Nutrition, Health and Wellness

Abstract

Many of today’s food products addressing the specific nutritional, health, and wellness needs of human and animal consumers are often very complex structures. Consequently, it is of utmost importance in food engineering research to develop a detailed understanding of the time-dependent transient changes in all of the structural aspects of food matrices from raw material harvesting, to product processing, to the point of breakdown during shelf life, consumption, and final digestion. Food structural understanding and control needs to be mastered on a broad range of length scales including the molecular, supramolecular, and the micro- and macrostructural levels. At the same time, the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of the food need to be considered. Only in this manner can a tailor-made buildup and controlled breakdown of food products be achieved and, subsequently, specific nutritional, physical, and sensorial properties be engineered. Reducing fat and sugar content to reduce the energy density of food requires a particular micro- and macrostructural design to compensate for the resulting sensorial changes. Specific structures can improve the stability and bioavailability (ultimately bioefficacy) of bioactive compounds and probiotics. Improving the nutritional profile of food by increasing the overall content of (plant) proteins, dietary fibers, or whole grains can be achieved by certain means of structuring. Specific health care products exhibiting a particular rheological behavior at very high protein content, for example, can only be realized by targeted modification of their supramolecular structure. Finally, food microstructures can be designed in such a way that their modulated digestion behavior triggers different physiological responses.