Effect of salt and pressure on the gelling properties of a pea-hemp protein blend

Yasmin Haut Mayer

Key information

Authors:

Yasmin Haut Mayer (Yasmin Haut Mayer)

Supervisors:

Marília Clemente Velez Mateus (Marília Clemente Velez Mateus); Christoph Denkel

Published in

December 12, 2022

Abstract

The consumption and demand of plant-based protein alternatives has been constantly increasing for many reasons: health, environmental or ethical concerns being the most relevant. Nevertheless, plant-based products are more easily accepted by consumers if they resemble commercially available goods. Therefore, plant-based food often resembles animal-based products such as milk or yogurt. In this work, the effect of homogenization and NaCl was studied with the goal of producing and improving the strength of plant-based gels of pea and hemp proteins. Suspensions of pea and hemp protein alone, as well as a blend of them, were prepared at 10%wprotein/w. Several analyses were performed to determine the effect of NaCl and homogenization on the functional properties of the plant-based proteins. Heat-, acid-, and enzymatic-induced gelations were evaluated regarding their performance on the samples. It has been concluded that the particle size was greatly reduced with homogenization, though this reduction slows down above a certain pressure. Gelation and protein solubility were also improved by homogenization. The effect of NaCl was not linear, but for the pea-hemp blend it had a negative impact on reducing the particle size of homogenized samples and on protein solubility. Moreover, it had a positive impact on reducing the surface charge of the proteins. For the pea-hemp blend, the presence of NaCl improved the strength of heat-induced gels, while acid-induced gels were stronger without NaCl. These results suggest that homogenization and NaCl can be used to obtain stronger gels for these plant-based proteins, depending on the gelation method.