DE102011106409A1 - Producing a locust bean gum comprising food product, preferably a powdered baby food, comprises heating a liquid foodstuff mixture and spray drying the mixture - Google Patents

Abstract

Producing a locust bean gum comprising food product comprises heating a liquid foodstuff mixture and spray drying the mixture.

Description

Output problems:

In some cases, infants increasingly suffer from increased regurgitation of food and in such cases receive an anti-reflux (AR) special-purpose food which, thanks to its increased viscosity, also prevents regurgitation in the stomach. The increased viscosity of the initial diet is achieved by the addition of the thickening agent locust bean gum. The addition is usually done by admixing.

Locust bean gum has a high bacterial load due to its origin, which can not be safely brought to the quality required for infant formula by the processing of this raw material. This concerns in particular the infant microorganism Cronobacter sakazakii.

Powdery starting foods are usually produced industrially by spray drying. For this purpose, a liquid mixture (slurry) is prepared from all suitable components of the food (including skim milk, whey, lactose, fat, vitamins, minerals, trace elements), the heating at temperatures of 90 to 140 ° C for a period of 2 to 50 seconds is subjected. Ideally, a temperature of 100 ° C is chosen for a period of less than ten seconds.

After homogenization and preconcentration to a dry mass of about 45%, the then dried on temperature slurry is dried by spray drying. Here, the 70 to 90 ° C hot slurry in the spray tower is injected into a hot air stream, thereby evaporating the water contained in the resulting fine droplets and a fine powder is formed, which is cooled in the lower sections of the spray tower and discharged below.

Locust bean gum is usually mixed at room temperature in the cooled powder from the spray drying process. When added to the slurry, the viscosity of the slurry would be greatly increased, so that it would have to be spray-dried with a significantly lower dry mass.

Solution idea:

option A

The locust bean gum is added directly to the slurry, heated and spray dried according to the conditions described above. As a result, all components of the diet, including locust bean gum, are subjected to the same germ reduction as is standard in comparable initial diets without carob gum supplement.

Variant B

The locust bean gum is injected dry via one of the nozzles in the head of the spray tower or a side inlet into the hot air stream in the upper tower. It adheres to the Slurrytröpfchen and is distributed so evenly in the resulting powder. During drying, a temperature is achieved by the hot drying air in the slurry droplets with the adhering carob seed powder particles, which leads to a reduction in the amount of carob seed flour and to the desired microbiological quality.

The methods A and B can also be combined with each other.

Claims (5)

A process for preparing a locust bean gum food which comprises heating and spray drying a liquid food mix. A method according to claim 1, characterized in that the locust bean gum is added to the liquid food mixture and the mixture is spray-dried. A method according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the locust bean gum is added during spray drying. Method according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the food is a powdered baby food. Method according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the food is an infant formula and in particular a foodstuff comprising skim milk, whey, lactose, fat, vitamins, minerals and trace elements.