Molar mass effect in food and health

Abstract

It is demanded to supply foods with good quality for all the humans. With the advent of aging society, palatable and healthy foods are required to improve the quality of life and reduce the burden of finance for medical expenditure. Food hydrocolloids can contribute to this demand by versatile functions such as thickening, gelling, stabilising, and emulsifying, controlling texture and flavour release in food processing. Molar mass effects on viscosity and diffusion in liquid foods, and on mechanical and other physical properties of solid and semi-solid foods and films are overviewed. In these functions, the molar mass is one of the key factors, and therefore, the effects of molar mass on various health problems related to noncommunicable diseases or symptoms such as cancer, hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia, constipation, high blood pressure, knee pain, osteoporosis, cystic fibrosis and dysphagia are described. Understanding these problems only from the viewpoint of molar mass is limited since other structural characteristics, conformation, branching, blockiness in copolymers such as pectin and alginate, degree of substitution as well as the position of the substituents are sometimes the determining factor rather than the molar mass. Nevertheless, comparison of different behaviours and functions in different polymers from the viewpoint of molar mass is expected to be useful to find a common characteristics, which may be helpful to understand the mechanism in other problems.

Flavoring properties that affect the retention of volatile components during encapsulation process

“…Stronger hydrophobic interactions may be expected with higher partition coefficient (log P ow ), which favors retention ( Nishinari & Fang, 2021 ). In general, the values of these partition coefficients depend on the chemical functional groups present and the lengths of the carbon chains in the compound ( Buttery et al, 1971 ) and increased values of Log P ow represent a less polar substance.…”

Release of glucose and maltodextrin DE 2 from gellan gum gels and the impacts of gel structure

“…Of the many factors to consider in predicting the release, the carbohydrate MW is of crucial importance (Nishinari and Fang, 2021). To examine this effect, carbohydrates of varying molecular weight (MW) were compared by release profiles from HA gellan gel (Figure 2A) and LA gellan gum (Figure 2C).…”

“…The rate of release was slower for maltose because it is a larger molecule than glucose. Larger molecules are expected to have slower diffusion coefficients due to the greater hydrodynamic radius (Nishinari and Fang, 2021). MDs are known to contain a wide range of different molecular sizes with a bimodal distribution and the distribution of the DE 2 MD is centred at 10,000 Da and 492,000 Da (Loret et al, 2004).…”

“…MW of a carbohydrate is known to determine the path of release and digestion from gels. Although there are certainly other structural factors such as branching and linkages in carbohydrates, molar mass is just as important and is sometimes overlooked (Nishinari and Fang, 2021). Some gel networks display a response to stimuli such as melting, dissolution, or swelling which typically have large impacts on release (McClements, 2021).…”

Effect of Tamarind Gum on the Properties of Phase-Separated Poly(vinyl alcohol) Films

“…Chemically, TG is galactoxyloglucan and has been reported to have a typical molecular weight of 52,350 Daltons [ 26 ]. However, its properties may vary depending on the molecule’s weight range, a typical phenomenon for different polysaccharides [ 27 ]. It contains glucose, xylose, and galactose [ 28 , 29 ].…”