Nanotechnology in Food Products Workshop Summary (2009) / Chapter Skim
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2 Application of Nanotechnology to Food Products
2 Application of Nanotechnology to Food Products
Pages 21-54
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From page 21... ...
The first presenter, José Miguel Aguilera of Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, discussed how nanotechnology will provide new ways of controlling and structuring foods with greater functionality and value. But first, he talked about how "nano" has, in fact, been part of food processing for centuries, since many food structures naturally exist at the nano-scale.
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APPLICATIONS OF NANOSCIENCES TO NUTRIENTS AND FOODS 1 Presenter: José Miguel Aguilera 2 Aguilera began with some introductory remarks about his work as a food microstructure engineer and how, in the past, the focus of his research was on larger food structures (i.e., "micron-size")
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So there is a big gap between what current technologies can do and the promise that nanotechnology holds forth. Introduction: The Food Industry and the Role of Nanosciences The food industry is the largest manufacturing sector in the world, with an annual turnover approximating US $4 trillion.
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Foods of the future will be built to meet consumer demands and desires around food perception, sensations of wellness and pleasure, texture and flavor, gut health, nutrient bioavailability, vitality, etc. Food chain Consumer The environment: Energy, water and waste Food perception Brain Wellness Pleasure Ethical issues Texture Production Raw Processing Packaging/ Flavor materials distribution Mouth Eating quality More foods Safety Preservation Delivering safe foods Gut health More nutrients Quality Structuring Convenience Satiety More "natural" Int'l trade Bioactives Information Gut Bioavailability of nutrients Right molecules Ingredients Traceability Ethical issues S&T: Biotechnology, nanotechnology, -omics Nutrition & health Vitality Body Weight control Analytical technologies and tools Assessment of quality and safety FIGURE 2-1 The two dimensions, or axes, of the food industry of the future: the "food chain" axis and the "consumer" axis.
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. 3 But much of what has been done in the past with natural micro- and nano-sized structures, not just in the dairy industry but the food industry in general, has been largely uncontrolled.
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micro-sized materials and structures in foods. Image courtesy of José Miguel Aguilera and the U.S.
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. In fact, some of food's most important raw materials -- proteins, starches, and fats -- undergo structural changes at the nanometer and micrometer scales during normal food processing (see Figure 2-4)
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The structuring of a foam for example, requires that certain structural components and processes happen not only at specific length scales but also within specific time scales. The beginning of foam formation occurs at the nm-length scale within milliseconds (e.g., adsorption of emulsifier molecules at the air-water interface)
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The process will be more akin to engineering design than recipe-reading, much like how computers and cars are assembled. By building foods from the molecule up, rather than relying on a coupled structureformation-structure stabilization process, food engineers will utilize an uncoupled "matrix precursors/structural elements" paradigm.
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Right now, traditional food processing relies on equipment that is capable of intervening at only the microscale (i.e., 10 µm–1 mm) , not nanoscale (with some exceptions)
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E van der Zwan, K Schroën, K van Dijke, and R Boom, Visualization of droplet break-up in pre-mix membrane emulsification using microfluidic devices, pp. 223-229, Copyright (2006)
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2005. A part of ice nucleating protein exhibits the ice-binding ability.
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Blood glucose levels increase more when the starch is cooked more. 10 So, cooking a starch can lead to very different glycemic responses.
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12 Food Microstructure and the Gastronomy/Pleasure Interphase Aguilera reminded the workshop audience that about one-third of the total food industry comprises food eaten outside the home; and that expenditures on "fine dining" are on the rise. He commented on how he has been working with many chefs over the last two years since, as he said, "chefs are the most creative and innovative people in the industry." Most of the 10 top chefs in the world today have their own molecular gastronomy laboratories.
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Health and well-being, designed functional foods, food protection, and tools to probe into the food microstructure are also high-need impact values. Applications of nanoscience to food processing by industry will also have a positive impact on consumers.
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3. But in order to do this, we need to increase our understanding of how existing food structures are formed and broken down, digested and absorbed.
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improving packaging and product information. Kampers described these nanotechnology applications as "low-hanging fruits." He said that focusing on these non-controversial, or less controversial, topics could provide a "stepping-stone for the general public to appreciate what nanotechnologies can offer to the food industry and where benefits for consumers can be derived from these technologies." Sensing Volatiles: Building an Electronic Nose Technologies that can sense volatiles rely on the use of receptor molecules that can adsorb small molecules that are released in certain monitored processes.
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One of the key challenges and one that nanotechnology can be used to address is making sure that the right receptors are on the right spots on the silicon chip. Using nanotechnology, one can "write addresses" on top of a chip by coating the chip with small single DNA strands, with each strand serving as an "address label." By linking complementary strands of DNA to particular receptor molecules, the receptors can find their own spots on the chip.
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More specifically, the food industry is seeking small, handheld devices that can be operated by unskilled workers at the production site and that can derive information about the amount of pathogens or spoilage organisms on the food in a matter of minutes. As one example, Kampers mentioned a nanotechnology-based lateral flow immunoassay device being developed by scientists at Wageningen.
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Color-changing labels could also be used to detect ripeness. This is an interesting application, Kampers noted, since it is more about food quality than food safety.
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. He said he would, however, briefly address the use of nanostructures in food packaging, noting that in fact one of the earliest applications of nanostructures in the food industry was the use of single-layer, clay-polymer composites in packaging, where single layers of clay are folded into a polymer system to create a new structure.
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18 Types of Nanomaterials and Nanostructures There are several different types of functional nanostructures that can be used as building blocks to create novel structures and introduce new functionalities into foods, including: microemusions, liposomes, nanoemulsions, particles, fibers, and monolayers. Weiss described several of these structures, their actual and potential uses in the food industry, and research that he and his colleagues have been conducting with some of these various types of nano-sized materials.
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In non-food industries, they are used for enhanced oil recovery, in lubricants and coatings, and in cosmetics and agrochemicals. In the food industry AQUANOVA (a German supplier of liquid formulas)
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. Weiss and his colleagues are experimenting with these more complex structures in an effort to make a palatable antimicrobial microemulsion (which would otherwise be too bitter to ingest)
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. Image courtesy of Jochen Weiss.
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The application of biopolymeric nanoparticles in the food industry is precluded however by the fact their manufacture requires the use of organic solvents. While alternative methods of assembly could be pursued, as of yet biopolymeric nanoparticles do not have any direct applications in food systems.
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. Weiss and his colleagues have demonstrated that the technique of co-spinning antimicrobial microemulsions inside the nanofibers can yield another type of highly active antimicrobial nanofiber system.
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In contrast to how food structures have traditionally been constructed (i.e., from recipes) , nanoscience enables a bottom-up design approach using molecules as the starting material: We then assemble these molecules and engineer their surfaces in ways that lead to new functionalities.
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Kampers concurred that some encapsulated food nanotech products are already on the market. However, the food industry does not refer to these products as "nanotechnology," even though scientists classify them 19 This section is a paraphrased summary of the open discussion that followed Weiss talk.
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The questioner then asked, what is the current level of corporate investment and intention to bring these various applications to market, and how does regulatory uncertainty affect that? Weiss responded first by saying that the investment and intention still exist but that much of what happens in the food industry happens "behind closed doors." There are a lot of intellectual property rights riding on many of these developments.
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Kampers identified persistent, non-dissolvable, non-biodegradable nanoparticles as the predominant source of food nanotechnology risks. He emphasized that most nanotechnology does not involve nanoparticles and that most nanoparticles are naturally existing, not synthetic, materials.
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. However, until recently, the food industry hasn't actually targeted objects at the nano-scale when working with food structure since it was widely believed that most functionalities and properties of food were determined by objects within the 1–100 µm range (i.e., the micrometer, not nanometer range)
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"While it's a wonderful compound," he said, "you can't apply them in a product without the consumer rejecting them." He said that efforts to engineer products with functionalities that change the way the products interact with the taste receptors on the tongue, for example, would have an impact on palatability. Kampers agreed with Weiss, stating that one of the new functionalities that nanotechnology can deliver is the capacity to control where in the human body an encapsulate will fall apart and release its nutrient or other contents.
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If we don't see those benefits, we are much better off staying with the systems we have, which are microstructured systems where we have a lot of experience." He urged everybody involved with food structure development to critically examine their structures and identify where and how those structures would be useful, recognizing that not all nanostructures will be "good." Related to the issue of risk, Doyle asked whether the antimicrobial applications that Weiss and his colleagues were studying would impact the gut microflora once inside the human body. "What's that going to do to the gut flora when you consume a long-lasting antimicrobial component?
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