Stabilizers carrageenans

Carrageenan is widely used in dairy products because it forms complexes with calcium and milk proteins. It thickens and helps suspend cocoa particles in chocolate milk. It stabilizes ice cream to protect it from thawing and refreezing, and enables it to hold more air. 

Fig. 24.—(a) Stereo view of slightly over a turn of the 3-fold double helix of i-carrageenan (23). The two chains are distinguished by open and filled bonds for clarity. The vertical line is the helix axis. Six interchain hydrogen bonds per turn among the galactose residues stabilize the double helix. The sulfate groups lined up near the periphery are crucial for intermolecular interactions. 

Spagnuolo, P. A., Dalgleish, D. G., Goff, H. D., and Morris, E. R. (2005). Kappa-carrageenan interactions in systems containing casein micelles and polysaccharide stabilizers. Food Hydrocolloids 19,371-377. 

A.L. Crumbliss, J.Z. Stonehuerner, R.W. Henkens, J. Zhao, and J.P. O Daly, A carrageenan hydrogel stabilized colloidal gold multi-enzyme biosensor electrode utilizing immobilized horseradish peroxidase and cholesterol oxidase/cholesterol esterase to detect cholesterol in serum and whole blood. Biosens. Bioelectron. 8, 331-337 (1993). 

Because of its gelling ability, carrageenan is widely used as food thickeners and emulsion stabilizers in the food industry and is present in many dairy products including less expensive ice-cream and other dessert products providing a smooth, creamy texture. It is used as a stabilizer in foods, such as chocolate milk. 

McClements, 2006 Anal et al., 2008). Different combinations of proteins and polysaccharides (e.g., P-lactoglobulin + pectin, carrageenan or alginate casein + pectin) have been investigated within the context of multilayer emulsion stabilization (Guzey and McClements, 2006). It seems that the main technical challenge associated with the utilization such complex formation for layer-by-layer emulsion stabilization is the avoidance of bridging flocculation (McClements, 2005, 2006). 

Dickinson, E., Pawlowsky, K. (1997) Effect of i-carrageenan on flocculation, creaming, and rheology of a protein-stabilized emulsion. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 45, 3799-3806. 

The presence of casein-polysaccharide interactions is commonly invoked to explain the mechanistic stabilizing role of food hydrocolloids in dairy colloids (Dickinson, 1998a). Thus, for example, under conditions where the casein micelles and K-carrageenan both carry a net negative... 

Figure 7.17 Influence of i-carrageenan on the state of flocculation of BSA-stabilized emulsions (20 vol% oil, 1.7 vt% protein. pH = 6, ionic strength = 0.005 M) stored at 25 °C for 40 hours. The average droplet size measured by static light scattering (Malvern Mastersizer), d32, is plotted against the polysaccharide concentration ch added to the freshly made emulsion. Reproduced from Dickinson and Pawlowsky (1997) with permission.

Gu, Y.S., Decker, E.A., McClements, D.J. (2005a). Influence of pH and carrageenan type on properties of p-lactoglobulin stabilized oil-in-water emulsions. Food Hydrocolloids, 19, 83-91. 

Mainly the gel-forming properties of x-carrageenan are used for pharmaceutical purposes. Due to the high viscosity of the. -carrageenan, it is employed as an emulsifying and stabilizing agent. 

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