Banana extract helps prevent ice-cream melting

In the oppressive heat of an Australian summer, what if we could have an ice-cream that didn’t melt in seconds? Scientists may have found a way to make this a reality using tiny extracts from banana plants. And it might even be healthier than regular ice-cream.

At the 255^th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), scientists discussed how tiny cellulose fibres extracted from banana plant waste could reduce melting time, increase shelf life and potentially even replace fats in ice-cream.

“Our findings suggest that cellulose nanofibres extracted from banana waste could help improve ice-cream in several ways,” explained Robin Zuluaga Gallego, PhD. “In particular, the fibres could lead to the development of a thicker and more palatable dessert, which would take longer to melt.”

According to Alllied Market Research, the global ice-cream market is projected to reach $97,301 million by 2023. The US Department of Agriculture also said that in 2016, American dairies produced more than 1.3 billion gallons of ice-cream. Since the popularity of this frozen food is expected to continue, researchers have been examining ways to improve the customer experience. This mainly consists of asking the question: how can we reduce the time it takes for ice-cream to become a creamy puddle?

Previously, scientists have attempted to prevent ice-cream from melting using wood pulp extracts, and in 2017, scientists in Japan used polyphenol compounds found in strawberries to create a melt-resistant ice-cream. Banana plants are wasted once the fruit has been harvested, so Zuluaga Gallego, Jorge Velásquez-Cock and colleagues at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Colombia) investigated the use of rachis, a fibrous extract from banana fruit stems, in slowing down the melting process.

Working alongside researchers at the University of Guelph, they extracted cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) from ground-up banana rachis and mixed it into the ice-cream at different concentrations, ranging from zero up to three-tenths of a gram per 100 grams of the dessert. They then analysed the effects of CNFs with the help of tools such as a texturometer, which measures the hardness of ice-cream.

One common complaint about ice-cream is the texture, as an abundance of large ice crystals can reduce its creaminess. Not only did the researchers find that the addition of CNFs helped decrease melting times compared to traditional ice-cream, but they also discovered a number of other positive outcomes of using CNFs, including texture.

The ACS release stated: “CNFs could increase shelf life of ice-cream, or at least decrease its sensitivity to temperature changes that occur when moved to and from the freezer. In addition, CNFs increased the viscosity of low-fat ice-cream, which improved the creaminess and texture of the product.”

According to Velásquez-Cock, this suggests that CNFs could help stabilise the fat structure in ice-creams, so it could potentially replace some of the fats and reduce the calories.

Further investigations into how fats such as coconut oil and milk fat might impact the behaviour of CNFs in other frozen desserts is intended to be conducted by the researchers.

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