Modulation of sweetness perception in confectionary applications

The development of sugar-reduced food products is a strategy to reduce the high sugar intake, which is aleading cause of global health concerns. Replacement and/or reduction of sucrose often leads to reducedsweetness perception with the consequence of decreased consumeracceptance. The aim of this work isto implement sensory modulation principles in a model confectionery system with the goal of enhancingsweetness perception. By using 3D-printing, confectionary samples were meso-structured by inhomogenousdistribution of sucrose concentrations and assessed, with a trained panel regarding sweetness. All sampleswere made up of a high and low sucrose phase and compared to a homogeneous reference sample. Theoverall sugar content was kept constant at 22.8 % in all samples and sweetness perception was compared.A significant increase of sweetness perception by over 30 % could be noted for samples consisting of a sweetouter shell and an inner less sweet core with a high sucrose gradient between the two phases. Whilst texuraleffects on sweetness perception could not be fully excluded, results can be seen as a strong indication thatsweetness modulation by inhomogenious distribution has a potential to be applied directly in solid foodproducts.

Analysis of avenanthramides in oat products and estimation of avenanthramide intake in humans

Avenanthramides are phenolic compounds found only in oats, and are of interest due to suggested bioactivities, including anti-inflammatory effects and induction of apoptosis. The objective of this work was to optimise a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for analysis of avenanthramides in food, and analyse the avenanthramide content in 45 oat fractions and products. The optimised HPLC method was based on triplicate extraction of 100 mg sample with 1 ml 80% ethanol in phosphate buffer (pH 2.8) and used gallacetophenone as an internal standard. Avenalumic acid-derived avenanthramide homologues 2f d and 2p d were also present, making up to 20% of the total avenanthramides detected in oats. The amounts of avenanthramides detected in oat products was 2–82 \ub5g/g. It was estimated that mean avenanthramide intake among oat consumers ranges from 0.3 to 2.1 mg/day, considerably lower than the amount used in studies that have investigated biological effects of avenanthramides in humans