Proteins as clean label ingredients in foods and beverages - Natural Food Additives, Ingredients and Flavourings - page 197

9.2 The range of clean label proteins used as ingredients in
foods and beverages
To fully understand the opportunities to exploit proteins as natural and clean label
functional food ingredients, a brief overview is given here of their origin and
intrinsic properties.
Industrial proteins are a complex group of food ingredients. First, they originate
from a wide variety of natural sources, including both vegetable and animal
sources. Second, the proteins themselves differ tremendously in their nature and
intrinsic properties, relating to the functionality practiced in their natural habitat.
Third, different manufacturing technologies are applied for their preparation/
production. Here we propose to categorize food-grade protein ingredients into
fi ve different groups (Fig. 9.1) based on their intrinsic molecular properties:

1 Hydrocolloid-like proteins

2 Unstructured, random proteins

3 Globular, monomeric proteins

4 Complex globular proteins

5 Gluten.

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Fig. 9.1 Schematic representation of the fi ve categories of proteins.

Copyright NIZO, 2012.