Formulation and characterization of a functionalized tomato snack bar

Date

2023-8-29

Author

Gül, Muhammed Rasim

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People's current eating habits have led to a rise in diseases. Eating ready-to-eat and snack foods increases the likelihood of developing cardiovascular diseases and obesity. The Mediterranean diet promotes a healthy lifestyle by improving nutrition behaviors. Tomato is one of the indispensable ingredients of the Mediterranean diet. Reformulation of traditional Mediterranean products to increase the adherence of the consumers is getting popular. Microwave-assisted drying systems are also gaining popularity because of their many advantages. In this study, a tomato snack bar enriched with olive powder and pea protein was developed by using microwave vacuum drying. Formulations also included tomato powder (TP) and low methoxylated pectin (LMP) as a structuring agent. The moisture content (MC) of the microwave-vacuum-dried samples varied in the range of 13.6%-19.8% and water activity (aw) values were ~0.6. The LMP and TP concentration affected the color of microwave-vacuum-dried samples. However, the color mainly changed in conventionally dried samples due to browning. In microwave-vacuum-dried samples, lycopene content decreased with increasing LMP, but increased with increasing TP. Textural properties of microwave-vacuum-dried snack bars increased with increasing LMP and TP. Both texture and FTIR spectroscopy results indicated that there was a network formation due to the contribution of protein and pectin; however, the type of interaction was highly dependent on the drying mechanism. NMR relaxometry data showed that microwave-vacuum-dried samples had a more uniform water distribution. Besides its time and energy efficiency, microwave-vacuum drying improved the color and textural properties of tomato snack bars compared to conventionally dried ones.

Subject Keywords

Microwave Drying, Pectin, Tomato Powder, Snack Bar, Mediterranean Diet

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/105194

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis