乳化系食品における品質制御要因の解明 （平成30年度日本食品科学工学会学会賞）

抄録

Food emulsions are thermodynamically unstable systems due to destabilization processes such as flocculation, creaming and coalescence. Thus, the maintenance of kinetic stability is critically important to obtain high-quality commercial products. Our group has been studying the adsorption behavior and interaction at the interface of several components in oil-in-water emulsions, particularly, the two major components, i.e., proteins and low-molecular weight surfactants (emulsifiers) to understand the factors governing quality of food emulsions. In this review, I show the main results of our studies on food emulsions over the past 30 years. The topics are as follows: 1) the interaction of proteins and emulsifiers, particularly the displacement of proteins from the interface by emulsifiers; 2) Fat crystallization as a cause of partial coalescence of oil droplets; 3) Emulsion formation and stabilization by adsorption of fine particles; 4) Rapid evaluation of long-term stability of emulsions.