Control of fat crystallisation by adding additives and changing the process

Saturated fat has a good potential for improving emulsion stability and products texture. However in the past ten years, food industry has intended to reduce its amount to prevent its impact on heart diseases. Therefore a better understanding of fat crystallisation has been studied to design the final properties of fat systems by changing the formulation and process of crystallisation. Fat crystallisation occurs in several stages like nucleation, crystal growth and fat network formation. Adding emulsifiers or waxes has demonstrated the possibility to change the process of crystallisation by promoting primary or secondary nucleation as a function of additive concentration. The head group size of emulsifiers has also exhibited an influence on fat crystallisation by promoting secondary nucleation with glycerol or primary heterogeneous nucleation with sorbitol. Furthermore waxes differing by their single or multi-component nature, have induced secondary and primary nucleation respectively. The process of crystallisation has been changed by applying different cooling rates and shear rates; increasing the cooling rate increased the number of nucleation sites and shear could enhance the interactions between fat and emulsifiers. Finally formulation and process have displayed the design of the final texture and allowed a reduction in saturated fat of 50 % while keeping the same network strength