Chapter 1 -General introduction
Food structure designConsumers increasingly demand healthier foods such as fat-reduced or plant-protein-based foods (Hathwar, Rai, Modi, & Narayan, 2012;Thiele & Weiss, 2003). However, changing the composition of foods while maintaining their sensory characteristics and consumer acceptability is still a challenge (Ares et al., 2017;Bayarri, Carbonell, Barrios, & Costell, 2011). The sensory characteristics of a food, consumer acceptance and food palatability are strongly influenced by food structure (Costell, Tárrega, & Bayarri, 2010;Guinard & Mazzucchelli, 1996). Engineering of food structure, therefore, might provide opportunities to tune the acceptability of food products by consumers. However, to use this strategy, a fundamental understanding of the interrelations between composition, structure, oral breakdown behaviour and sensory perception of foods is needed. In this thesis, these links will be explored. In particular, it will be investigated whether the structuring of the dispersed fat phase can be used to tune the mechanical properties and the sensory properties of foods. In this chapter, an introduction to food structure, rheology, tribology, sensory perception and their links is given. Subsequently, an outline of the thesis and its approach are provided.Chapter 2 -Clustering of oil droplets in o/w emulsions: Controlling cluster size and interaction strength Chapter 2 -Clustering of oil droplets in o/w emulsions: Controlling cluster size and interaction strength