Food Fermentation for Purpose: Health Promotion and Biopreservation (LONGLIFE)

The daily intake of sodium, sugar and fats by modern western consumers is too high. This leads to major health issues and rising costs of healthcare. In many countries both the food industries and consumers have pledged to make western diets more healthy. However, the assortment of processed foods meeting nutrition and health requirements is still small and available products do not often meet expectations, thus compromising consumers’ food based personal health. Recently, the Dutch health agency RIVM has indicated a fibre deficiency of the dutch population in the range of 10 to 20g per day.
In the last 10 years a lot of practical reformulation strategies have taken place and reformulated products reduced in salt, sugar and fat and enriched in fibre have been brought to the market. Yet, the impact of new products is not evident in measurements of the consumption level of salt and sugar and no decline can be observed, while fibre deficiency is still large. Even though it is clear that consumers are aware of the health risks associated with their diet choices, the less healthy choices are still predominant, also due to a lack of sufficient alternatives in the market.
Fermentation has been exploited by mankind for millennia to preserve food and enhance the sensory quality of food. Bakery, dairy and meat products are common examples where fermentation is essential to guarantee product quality. Current practices for many of these products are still relying on traditional methods. However, fermentations hold a great potential to enrich food with bioactive metabolites with physiological and preservation functions, providing health and economic benefits. Furthermore, fermentation may also hold the potential of improving the technological functionality of nutrient rich ingredients such as cereal brans, thus allowing for increasing their inclusion on bakery products such as bread and biscuits.
The consortia aims at renewing the fermentation process to produce value-added fermented dairy liquids and powders, cereal-derived foods and beverages and meat products with improved health benefits, organoleptic qualities (e.g. smell, taste, food texture etc.) and extended shelf-life. The results of this project will have a positive impact on the food industry through the innovative processes leading towards a more sustainable food production and nutrition security, benefitting the health of citizens, society and the economy.
Within the consortia TNO is responsible for the development of heat and steam treatments, i.e. super-heated steaming (SHS) of cereal bran from various sources to increase extractability of soluble fibres and bioactives from the cellulosic material and to further enhance the bioavailability of bioactives by improving the fermentability of the bran. SHS processing as a novel clean process route which been successfully tested at TNO to increase the extraction of valueable compounds from different raw materials. It is envisaged that the treated bran substrates are then provided to the other partners for further evaluation as an effecive ingredient in fermentation technology.
Based on pre-selection of starter bacteria capable of producing bioactive metabolites (exopolysaccharides, polyols and antimicrobial compounds) and their use during fermentation of milk and cereals, the fermentation process will be optimised by the other partners to enable proper inclusion of bran and hence its nutrients in food products for health and economic benefit.
In close collaboration with an industrial partner, i.e. Barilla, TNO is responsible to define two commercial reference products, a bread and a biscuit product, of which the nutritional quality will be enhanced by developing optimal formulation strategies for inclusion of nutrient rich ingredients, i.e. bran and fermented bran. The formulation strategy under investigation aim at obtaining: (i) a bran enriched bread with >8% total dietary and additional bioactives and (ii) a biscuit product