RHEOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF FOOD GUMS AND FOOD GUM MIXTURES

Food gums are used in many formulations for their viscosity-imparting effect on aqueous media, providing acceptable texture to food products . To better attain the desired functional properties and often, due to economical considerations, mixtures of food gums are used in food pre parations. Therefore, a careful analysis of the functionality of these mixtures becomes essential to better understand their behaviour in di fferent food processing operations, handling and storage. This review consists of the following parts: (1) the empirical mathematical models for describing rheological properties of food gums and gum mixtures; (2) the effect of interactions between gums on the rheological propert ies of food gum mixtures; (3) the effect of thermal processing and gam ma irradiation on the rheological properties of gums; and (4) effects of food additives on food gum mixtures. Several mathematical models ha ve been developed and used to fit the experimental data, as well as to predict the rheological properties of food gums and gum mixtures. In most cases the models are empirical and only valid at specific shear r ate ranges or at certain specific conditions due to the complexity of gums and non-uniform molecular weight distribution.