The impact of manufacturing process on the content of hard triglycerides, hardness and thermal properties of milk chocolate

The rheological and physical properties of the chocolate mass depend on the ingredient composition as well as the manufacturing process. For the purpose of this work, a milk chocolate mass of identical composition and raw materials was manufactured by using the two different manufacturing processes: a standard manufacturing process (SM) in five-roller mills including conching, and an unconventional manufacturing process in a ball mill (R1). The quality of both milk chocolate masses was examined by the comparison of thermal (differential scanning calorimetry analysis), textural properties (texture analysis), and the content of hard triglycerides (nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy). The main goal of this work was to determine whether chocolate can be produced in a ball mill, using the manufacturing process which results in significant savings, without causing drastic changes to the chocolate physical properties. The new manufacturing process rationalises the standard method by combining two phases, namely conching, and refining into a single one. This results in reduced initial and maintenance costs, as well as costs of workforce and fuel, etc. The results have shown that the new chocolate manufacturing process has a positive impact on texture and thermal properties, while the content of hard triglycerides remains the same

Textural and sensory properties of spreads with sucrose and maltitol

Spreads are confectionery products based on sugar, vegetable fat, cocoa powder, milk powder and other ingredients. Basic properties of these products are good spreadability in wide temperature range (from ambience to fridge temperature), rich creamy chocolate taste, and homogenous smooth structure without oil phase migration. The undesirable attribute of these products is their relatively high energy value (2300 kJ/100 g). In recent years, cocoa cream products with reduced energy values have become very popular among consumers and today they are present in the assortment of many confectionery manufacturers. One way to produce spreads with reduced energy value is the replacement of sugar (sucrose) with adequate sweetener. Maltitol is a low-energy polyol capable to qualitatively and quantitatively replace sucrose. Cocoa spreads with maltitol and with the combination of maltitol and sucrose (produced at different temperatures and mixer rotation speeds) have similar texture and rheological properties compared to the spreads with sucrose. The spreads with maltitol have about 15% lower energy value in comparison to the same product with sucrose

Older Hypertensive Patients’ Adherence to Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors

Non-pharmacological treatment including diet, body weight reduction, smoking cessation and physical activity, is very important part of hypertension treatment. The objective of this study was to investigate the adherence to healthy lifestyle behavior in the representative sample of the older hypertensive patients, and to investigate factors associated with adherence in the studied older population. The study was conducted on random sample of 362 long term hypertensive (> five years) patients older than 65 years of age, at Health Care Center of Kragujevac. Adherence was assessed using the structured questionnaire for the analysis of the implementation of both hypertension and diabetes guidelines in the primary care. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted. Nearly 35% of examined patients were highly adherent; they exercised regularly, avoided smoking for at least five years and consumed special healthy diet prescribed for hypertension. Another 35.6% of the cases reported exercising regularly, 39.5% followed the recommended diet for the hypertension, while 23.4% of the patients have still consumed cigarettes. Multivariate logistic regression demonstrated that received counseling on healthy lifestyle behaviors by physicians and lack of education predicted high adherence to healthy lifestyle behavior. In order to improve adherence of elderly hypertensive patients to healthy lifestyle, strengthening patient-physician relationships through efforts to enhance communication may be a promising strategy to enhance patients’ engagement in healthy lifestyle behaviors for hypertension. Such an improvement could be achieved through the education of both the physicians and patients