PEA PROTEIN AND DIFFERENT POLYSACCHARIDE MIXED GELS FOR FOOD APPLICATIONS

Animal suffering, climate changes and health concerns are some of the reasons supporting the growth in vegan, vegetarian, and flexitarian movements. Despite the wide variety of plant-based products commercially available, the development of products with high protein content and good texture properties are challenges to be overcome by food industries. In this sense, this study aimed to develop mixed pea protein and polysaccharide gels with enhanced texture properties. The gels were prepared by mixing pea protein (15% w/w), different polysaccharides (low acyl gellan gum - GGLA, κ-carrageenan - CAR, and high acyl gellan gum - GGHA) at a final concentration of 1% (w/w), and NaCl (0.06M). The dispersions were heated at 80°C for 30 min under mechanical stirring, then the pH was adjusted to 7.0 with NaOH (0.1M). Samples were placed in cylindrical molds at 4°C overnight for uniaxial compression, texture profile analysis, and syneresis tests. Other aliquots were immediately transferred to the rheometer to perform an oscillatory temperature sweep. Gels containing 0.95% CA and 0.05% GGHA showed the most interesting results for hardness, cohesiveness, and chewiness, achieving 6.76 N, 0.30, 1.68 N/mm This sample was also the most deformable one (0.73). NaCl induced the formation of less deformable gels, probably due to the harder interaction between biopolymer chains. For fracture stress and young modulus, NaCl favored gellan gum interactions, with 0.95% GGLA and 0.05% GGHA gel achieving highest results, 5.85 kPa and 22.01 kPa, respectively. This corroborated the syneresis assays, in which samples without NaCl retained more water. Rheological measurements indicated that all samples presented a gel-like behavior, with tan δ<1 and G′>G′′ even at 80ºC. Although gels containing 0.95% CA and 0.95% GGLA presented the most interesting results for texture and mechanical properties, all samples showed self-supporting structures and could be used for different applications by food industries.