This text provides comprehensive coverage of fibers used in food formulations, starting with the understanding of their basic chemical structure and how they are present and organized in the cell wall structure, their physicochemical and functional properties, their impact on the digestive process and their role and preventive action against various chronic diseases including colon cancer. The book focuses on traditional and new fiber rich sources, incorporating an integrated approach in terms of the technological and engineering processes used to obtain and incorporate them in traditional foods, plus their characterization, extraction and modification. The study of processing conditions including the chemical, physical and enzymatic processes of fiber extraction and modification are also covered, including traditional and emerging processing technologies, plus the application of fibers in the development of new products and processes. Science and Technology of Fibers in Food Systems integrates knowledge of fibers from their basic structural and property aspects and the applications of these ingredients to extraction process analysis, modification and feasibility for use at the industry level. The chapters incorporate the physiological aspects related to the consumption of fiber for prevention of serious diseases.

The diverse segments of the snack industries that generate close to $520 billion of annual sales are adapting to new consumer ́s expectations, especially in terms of convinience, flavor, shelf life, and nutritional and health claims. Snack Foods: Processing, Innovation, and Nutritional Aspects was conceptualized to thoroughly cover practical and scientific aspects related to the chemistry, technology, processing, functionality, quality control, analysis, and nutrition and health implications of the wide array of snacks derived from grains, fruits/vegetables, milk and meat/poultry/seafood. This book focuses on novel topics influencing food product development like innovation, new emerging technologies and the manufacturing of nutritious and health-promoting snacks with a high processing efficiency. The up-to-date chapters provide technical reviews emphasising flavored salty snacks commonly used as finger foods, including popcorn, wheat-based products (crispbreads, pretzels, crackers), lime-cooked maize snacks (tortilla chips and corn chips), extruded items (expanded and half products or pellets), potato chips, peanuts, almonds, tree nuts, and products derived from fruits/vegetables, milk, animal and marine sources. Key Features: Describes traditional and novel processes and unit operatios used for the industrial production of plant and animal-based snacks. Depicts major processes employed for the industrial production of raw materials, oils, flavorings and packaging materials used in snack food operations. Contains relevant and updated information about quality control and nutritional attributes and health implications of snack foods. Includes simple to understand flowcharts, relevant information in tables and recent innovations and trends. Divided into four sections, Snack Foods aims to understand the role of the major unit operations used to process snacks like thermal processes including deep-fat frying, seasoning, packaging and the emerging 3-D printing technology. Moreover, the book covers the processing and characteristics of the most relevant raw materials used in snack operations like cereal-based refined grits, starches and flours, followed by chapters for oils, seasoning formulations and packaging materials. The third and most extensive part of the book is comprised of several chapters which describe the manufacturing and quality control of snacks mentioned above. The fourth section is comprised of two chapters related to the nutritional and nutraceutical and health-promoting properties of all classes of snacks discussed herein.

This book reviews the evidence supporting the influence of plant fibers on our daily life by either having impacts on our nutrition or improving processed foods for human and animal feeding. By bringing new information and updating existing scientific data, this book will also be a consistent source of information for both professional and non-prof

Our nation faces daunting challenges to its food and fiber system and to the condition of our natural resources in the coming decades. Rapid increases in world population and the pressure on resources generated by increasing per capita consumption as a result of increasing per capita income challenge the very basis of our standard of livingâ€"our food, fiber, and natural-resource base. As the nation faces the challenges, new technologies and new information systems are changing the face of biologic research. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has traditionally been the nation's primary public research engine in food, fiber, and natural resources. The National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program (NRI) is a small part of that USDA research effort, but it accounts for a substantial portion of the nation's merit-based peer-reviewed fundamental research efforts in food, fiber, and natural resources. In 1997, USDA asked the National Research Council Board on Agriculture (now the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources) to conduct an independent assessment of the NRI program. Specifically, USDA asked the Research Council to: perform a retrospective assessment of the quality and value of research funded by the program; determine whether the science and technology priorities in the major NRI programs are defined appropriately; assess how NRI activities complement other USDA programs, those of other federal agencies, and state programs in the private sector; and recommend the nature and content of changes for the future. This report summarizes the results of the committee's analysis. Chapter 2 summarizes the value of food, fiber, and natural resources-research to the United States, focusing on economic contributions and rates of return of food and fiber research. The committee's analysis of the quality, value, fairness, relevance, and responsiveness of the NRI competitive grants program is presented in chapter 3. Chapter 4 presents the committee's analysis of the role and scope of the NRI, including its scientific objectives, its value in training and education, and its complementarity with other research activities. The committee's analysis of NRI's priority-setting process and its research priorities is given in chapter 5. The committee's analysis of organizational and funding issues is given in chapter 6. Chapter 7 presents the committee's recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the NRI program. Additional supporting materials are found in appendixes A through I.

Probiotics: Advanced Food and Health Applications presents the functional properties and advanced technological aspects of probiotics for food formulation, nutrition, and health implications. Specifically, the book addresses the fundamentals of probiotics, from their discovery to actual developments, the microbiological aspects of the main genus showing probiotic properties, the natural occurrence of probiotic strains in foods, the development of nutraceuticals based on probiotics, and the relationship of probiotics to health. The book also includes a discussion on regulatory aspects. This book is an excellent resource for food scientists, nutritionists, dieticians, pharmaceutical scientists, and others working with probiotics or studying related fields. - Introduces basic concepts on probiotics and describes the properties of main microorganisms with applications in probiotics - Provides a description on the natural presence of probiotics in different food matrixes and how probiotics can be developed for incorporation in food formulations - Offers advice on how probiotics can be used as nutritional input, along with their value on the preservation of healthy intestinal status, and their potential benefits in specific illnesses - Contains definitions, applications, literature reviews and recent developments - Includes a general introduction to the subject, taxonomy, biology, primary sources of probiotics and development of probiotics as food ingredients, human nutrition and health properties, and the use of high-throughput technologies in probiotics characterization

Connects fiber chemistry and structure to properties that can be designed and engineered Micro- and nanoscale, synthetic and natural polymer and non-polymer fibers explained with applications to industrial, electronic, biomedical and energy Information pertinent for fiber, textile, composite, polymer and materials specialists This volume provides the basic chemical and mathematical theory needed to understand and modify the connections among the structure, formation and properties of many different types of manmade and natural fibers. At a fundamental level it explains how polymeric and non-polymeric fibers are organized, how such fibers are formed, both synthetically and biologically, and how primary and secondary properties, from basic flow to thermal and electrical qualities, are derived from molecular and submolecular organization, thus establishing the quantitative and predictive relationships needed for fiber engineering. The book goes on to show how fiber chemistry and modes of processing for dozens of materials such as silks, ceramics, glass and carbon can be used to control functional optical, conductive, thermal and other properties. Its discussion ranges over microscale and nanoscale fibers (nanofibers), covering methods such as spinning and electrospinning, as well as biological fiber generation through self-assembly. Technologies in this text apply to the analysis and design of fibers for industrial, electronic, optical, medical and energy storage applications.

The emergence of the discipline of encapsulation and controlled release has had a great impact on the food and dietary supplements sectors; principally around fortifying food systems with nutrients and health-promoting ingredients. The successful incorporation of these actives in food formulations depends on preserving their stability and bioavailability as well as masking undesirable flavors throughout processing, shelf life and consumption. This second edition of Encapsulation and Controlled Release Technologies in Food Systems serves as an improvement and a complement companion to the first. However, it differentiates itself in two main aspects. Firstly, it introduces the reader to novel encapsulation and controlled release technologies which have not yet been addressed by any existing book on this matter, and secondly, it offers an in-depth discussion on the impact of encapsulation and controlled release technologies on the bioavailability of health ingredients and other actives. In common with the first edition the book includes chapters written by distinguished authors and researchers in their respective areas of specialization. This book is designed as a reference for scientists and formulators in the food, nutraceuticals and consumer products industries who are looking to formulate new or existing products using microencapsulated ingredients. It is also a post-graduate text designed to provide students with an introduction to encapsulation and controlled release along with detailed coverage of various encapsulation technologies and their adaptability to specific applications.