In today’s greatly enriched material life, a wide variety of snack foods and dazzling advertisements attract people’s taste buds and eyes. Snack food, also can be called leisure food. In recent years, the absolute market volume and per capita consumption of leisure food in China have been steadily increasing.

As the casual food market expands, the issue of food additives is getting more and more attention. Some consumers may have some misunderstanding that food additives are always harmful. In fact, some additives are natural, environmentally friendly, and completely harmless to the body. Gum Arabic is such a completely safe additive, and quietly play their role in the leisure food.

Gum Arabic

Gum Arabic is one of the oldest and best known natural gums in the world, a gum secreted by the branches of the gum Arabic tree, or Acacia spp. 5000 years ago, the Egyptians used this gum to keep their food and beverages flavored.

Later, this gum was used to make candy and other food products, not only stable quality, but also glossy and bright, ground into a powder mixed with drinks, can be durable to prevent sedimentation. Now, after hand-harvesting and purifying the secretion of the trunk, we get the gum arabic that we use.

In nutrition, gum arabic basically does not produce calories, is a good water-soluble dietary fiber, with strong antioxidant properties, daily intake of 5-10g, but also helps to balance the colorectal microbial ecosystem, improve intestinal dynamics, is widely used in health care confectionery and beverages. In the food industry, it is a natural emulsion stabilizer, thickener, binder, film-forming agent, glazing agent, water-soluble dietary fiber. Gum Arabic has become one of the most widely used colloids in our food industry.

Gum Arabic in the application of leisure food

First, fried foods, such as fried fries, potato chips, fruit and vegetable crisps, shrimp sticks and so on. Before deep-frying, covering a layer of gum arabic coating on the surface of the food can reduce the oil absorption of fried food, thus reducing the oil content of the food and increasing its crispiness. Experiments have proved that it can reduce the oil absorption rate by 50% in French fries, improve the taste, reduce moisture absorption and extend the shelf life.

Second, baked foods, including baked potato chips and baked products. Adding gum arabic directly and mixing it with other dry ingredients to the ingredients of baked foods can achieve the effect of replacing part of the oil, enhancing the taste, improving the adhesion of the products, reducing the rate of breakage, enhancing the crispness of the products and prolonging the shelf life.

Thirdly, it can be applied to extruded puffed food (e.g. rice fruit type). Experiments have proved that gum arabic can enhance the homogeneity of the morphology of such foods. Reducing food aging, prolonging shelf life, enhancing product crispness and maintaining crispy shelf life are also the roles it can play. In addition, gum arabic can lubricate the surface of the product in low additive amount, reduce mechanical energy consumption in extrusion processing; when the additive amount reaches 3.5%, energy consumption is reduced to the maximum value.

Fourth, applied to nuts and cookies leisure food, gum arabic can act as an efficient brightener and efficient seasoning adhesive. Spraying Gum Arabic at a concentration of 40-50% on the surface of baked products after baking can not only brighten the food and firmly adhere the seasonings to the food surface, but also enhance and maintain the crispness of the product during the preservation period and reduce product aging.

In addition, gum arabic is also useful in other snack foods, such as cereal bars and multilayer textured foods. In the production of cereal bars, gum arabic acts as a binder, partially replacing sucrose and glucose/corn syrup to reduce sweetness, and as an emulsifier, replacing lecithin. It can be used to maintain the stability of the food texture during storage by controlling the water activity (avoiding hardening or softening) as well as providing a short filamentary structure (not causing pulling). Gum Arabic is also required for multi-layered foods to prevent moisture migration and to maintain a crispy exterior and tender interior.