Modified pectin gels well for low-sugar products

With increasing demand for low-sugar food products, scientist have been exploring modified pectins for optimising the gelling process.

U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists developed what is claimed to be a high-quality and inexpensive pectin that can gel in low-sugar products and still be scalable for commercial production.

Pectin, a soluble fibre used mainly for gelling food products like jams and jellies, is naturally found in fruits and vegetables. Most commercial pectins are from citrus fruit peels and are extracted into a powder to act as a gelling agent in foods.

Wei Zhao, a research chemist from the U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory, said: “Most commercially available pectins successfully gel only when combined with high-sugar products and acid.”

“For people seeking low-sugar foods, most commercial pectins will not gel properly since a lot of sugar is needed for the gelling process. There are some commercial pectins that can gel in low-sugar foods, but these alternatives tend to be low quality, are quite expensive to produce, and may contain undesirable residues.”

In a recent study, Zhao and other ARS researchers found that they can pre-treat a fresh orange peel in a simple high-pressure processing (HPP) treatment and then extract pectin from that orange peel using a standard commercial method. The extracted pectin has desirable structural properties needed for gelling low-sugar products without leaving undesirable residues.

“Our research findings reveal the great potential of producing low-cost, high-quality pectins with increased gelling capacity by adding a simple HPP pre-treatment of fresh source material for pectin extraction,” Zhao said.

The research findings were published in two journal papers and can be read in Food Hydrocolloids.

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