Illustration by Maja Stenstam
Plant based foods are in many ways more sustainable than the alternative and if you live in a rich country, you should eat more of it. Consumers also want to do so, but they also want a delightful experience and when it comes to food – that is a complex thing…
The first bite… the texture, the melting sensation, the creaminess, the mouthfeel… or even the before the first bite… how it pours, shines, sits fluffy and signals to our salivary glands…
Novozymes are contributing to food producers’ possibilities to create new plant-protein rich products through the use of their enzyme technologies. Bridging from the biomolecular expertise of Novozymes to the consumers sensorial judgements involves several incredibly interesting chemical, physical and biological co-dependent phenomena.
A method evaluation project, set in context
Novozymes asked CR to help building this bridge of understanding what happens and what matters on the micro and nano scale in the mouth. Based on a critical literature review, we evaluated a set of possible methods to differentiate between mouthfeel attributes rated differently by consumers.
Indeed, the more we did the more we must admire the human sensorial palette which in an instant combine so many “results of physical chemical character” to make a clear judgment of love or dislike. However, also our more technical efforts did produce a suggestion of methods possible to use for future step-by-step screening of new alternatives and maybe more importantly a deeper understanding of how to circumvent bad combinations. We hope this tool box and understanding will be used to help producers formulate and design foods that are good in all possible ways: nutritious, sustainable and tasty.
Techniques we used were:
- Laser diffraction
- DWS
- Rheology
- Tribology, force board
Novozymes was recognized already 2002 as the world’s first company to report a triple bottom line annual report. They are committed to the UN SDGs and aligned their targets to this already 2015. Thus, we are very proud to have been selected by them to work on some of their ambitious product development goals.
