Many of today’s food products addressing specific nutritional, health and wellness needs of human and animal consumers are often very complex structures. Consequently, it is of utmost importance in food engineering research to develop a detailed understanding of the time-dependent transient changes in all of the structural aspects of food matrices from raw material harvesting, to product processing, to the point of breakdown during shelf-life, consumption and final digestion. Food structural understanding and control needs to be mastered on a broad range of length scales including: the molecular, supra-molecular, micro- and macro-structural level. At the same time, the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of the food need to be considered. Only in this manner can a tailor-made build-up and controlled breakdown of food products be achieved, and subsequently, can specific nutritional, physical and sensorial properties be engineered. Reducing fat and sugar content in order to reduce the energy density of food requires a particular micro- and macro-structural design in order to compensate for resultant sensorial changes. Specific structures can improve the stability and bioavailability (ultimately bioefficacy) of bioactive compounds and probiotics. Improving the nutritional profile of food by increasing the overall content of (plant) proteins, dietary fibres or whole grains can be achieved by certain means of structuring. Specific health care products exhibiting a particular rheological behaviour at very high protein content, for example, can only be realised by targeted modification of their supra-molecular structure. Finally, food microstructures can be designed in such a way that their modulated digestion behaviour triggers different physiological responses.
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