Algins food additives

The system shown is heavily used in food processing applications such as milk or chocolate crumb production, sugar substitutes, modified starch, and alginates. In addition to food processing applications, such a system is used in the processing of heat-sensitive pharmaceuticals, polymer suspensions like latex, in processing pigments and dyestuffs, and pesticides. 

Commercial applications for polysaccharides include their use as food additives, medicines and industrial products. Although plant polysaccharides (such as starch, agar and alginate) have been exploited commercially for many years, microbial exopolysaccharides have only become widely used over the past few decades. The diversity of polysaccharide structure is far greater in micro-organisms compared to plants and around 20 microbial polysaccharides with market potential have been described. However, microorganisms are still considered to be a rich and as yet underexploited source of exopolysaccharides. 

In this experiment you will work with a natural polymer called alginic acid that comes from seaweed. Alginic acid is a polysaccharide as are cellulose and starch. Unlike cellulose and starch, however alginic acid as the name implies contains acidic functional groups called carboxylic acids. Salts of alginic acid are used as food additives, especially as a thickener. 

Anderson DM, Brydon WG, Eastwood MA, Sedgwick DM. Dietary effects of propylene glycol alginate in humans. Food Addit Contam 1991 8(3) 225-236. 

Future studies can focus on the use of other already approved food additives/biopolymers for food application studies. These may be alginates, gelatin, soy protein isolates and carrageenan. Furthermore, the ability of biopolymers to form complexes and be functionalized or modified for specific applications can be explored. 

Fungi and bacteria are sources of polysaccharides and especially of exopolysaccharides which can be produced in culture media on an industrial scale. They are a source of new additives for cosmetic or food applications but also for biological activity. Many of them are now in development a review will be published in the second edition of Reference 12. Many of these polysaccharides are water soluble and able to compete with natural polysaccharides as described before (alginates, carrageenans, galacto- and glucomannans, chitosans, pectins, etc) especially in the domain of food additives. Many books discuss their applications (183-187). 

Sodium alginate is GRAS listed and is accepted in Europe for use as a food additive. It is also included in the FDA Inactive Ingredients Database. 

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