Shelf Life Evaluation of Extruded Snacks Coated with Maize Starch to Eliminate the Use of Fats in the Flavoring Process

Abstract

The consumption of extruded snacks has been suffering from severe restriction in several countries by its high content of fat and low nutritional value. An important manufacturing step that provides desirable characteristics for snack food is flavouring, where the product is pulverized with vegetable fat, at a rate of 10 to 20 %, for complete fixation of the flavours in the product. This study objective was to eliminate the use of fat in the snack flavouring process replacing it by an aqueous solution of maize starch and compare the, physical, chemical and sensory characteristics of the flavoured snacks with and without fat. Experimental design was conducted to identify the best concentration of the water diluted maize starch to be pulverized in the product. The snacks were produced by the single screw IBX50 extruder. Analyses of instrumental hardness, moisture content, water activity, expansion ratio, specific volume, acidity, total lipid repeated every 15 days for 45 days, adsorption isotherms and sensory evaluation after manufacture were performed. Since the low acidity contributes to the increase in shelf life, the acidity number of the aromatized snack without fat, 0.560 mgKOH / g, had a better result when compared to the aromatized snack with fat, 1.065 mgKOH / g. Another major result between samples with and without fat were the reduction of total lipids from 15.07 % to 1.56 % followed by the absence of significant difference (p < 0.05) in the sensorial and physical-chemical analysis. Hence, is possible to conclude that vegetable fat elimination replaced by a 4 % maize starch aqueous solution, gelatinized at 85 °C, is a viable alternative to reduce the lipid content in flavoured snacks without loss of consumer attractiveness