A pulsed vacuum acidification (PVA) to improve the rate of pH reduction of mushrooms was studied. Two pressures at 400mbar and 200mbar maintained for a vacuum period of 2min before the restoration of atmospheric pressure, were applied. Results stated that PVA may be used to significantly increase the rate of hydrogen ions diffusion into mushrooms due to the increase of acid solution-vegetable tissue contact area. The study of the response of vegetable tissue confirmed the importance of the initial vacuum pulse on total, gas and liquid volume changes. The results suggested the low rigidity of mushroom's tissues and highlighted the differences in terms of porosity reduction due to the impregnation level and the compression of pores at both the vacuum pressure studied. The remaining void fraction after PVA was in agreement with a greater impregnation at high vacuum pressure leading to a greater acidification rate.

Depending on geographical origins and cultural traditions, different brewing procedures are used all over the world to prepare a coffee cup. In this work, we explored as three grinding levels of coffee powder and three coffee preparation methods such as by filtration (American), by boiling (Turkish) and by extraction under pressure (Espresso) affect healthy compounds and physicochemical attributes in coffee cup served to consumers.

About 80–90% of the adults are regular consumers of coffee brews. Its consumption has positive effect on energy expenditure, power of muscle, while over consumption has negative effects widely debated. Across geographical areas, coffee brews may notably change when preparing Espresso, American, French, Turkish, etc. This chapter reviewed the phases able to affect the amount of caffeine in cup. Three most important areas will be addressed: (1) coffee varieties and environment; (2) coffee processing operations; (3) brewing methods extraction variables. What arises from the state of art is that, although there is a significant agreement on the effect of each critical variable on caffeine extraction, there is also a great difficulty to precisely know how much caffeine is in a coffee cup, although this is the most important information for the consumers. The number of affecting variables is very high, and some of them are inversely related with caffeine content (brewing time and brew volume), while others exhibit a direct relationship (grinding level, dose, and tamping). Finally, some variables under the control of barista rarely are accurately reproduced during brewing. For instance, it was found that the caffeine content in a Starbuck’s coffee cup during different days varied significantly.

The clustering of pores of three types of bread was studied by measuring the two point cluster function, C2(r). The ability of this function in describing the connectivity among the structure elements of bread was proved by comparing the C2(r) of a “reference” and a “reconstructed” bread image having the same porosity fraction and lineal path distribution function, L(r). The two point cluster function of the void phase of two commercial, “Pan Briosce” and “Pancarre”, and a non commercial, “White”, bread enabled to highlight significant differences of their topological properties. “White” bread was characterized from more homogeneous pores with a lower degree of connectivity while the “Pancarre” samples exhibited voids highly connected producing pores bigger in size and with a shape extremely complex. Furthermore, for the first time it was proved as the microstructure information of the two point cluster function allows discriminating the 90% of the total variace of bread samples.

The importance of the relation between food microstructure and their quality is recognized as crucial. In terms of bread quality, the precise characterization of the crumb structure is considered essential to evaluate its sensorial properties. A variety of different statistical correlation functions have been theoretically formulated in recent years to quantify the microstructure of general random heterogeneous materials but they have rarely been applied in food science. In this paper, we have developed a method to calculate the lineal-path distribution function L(x) for the void and solid matrix phases from two-dimensional (2D) images of bread. The method has been successfully employed here to characterize the microstructure for two type of commercial breads. Our results reveal that crumb structure may be modeled as a system of polydispersed overlapping disks. Moreover, we have quantified the dimensions of the voids and crumb phase statistically and differences in the homogeneity of crumb structure.

il brevetto concerne un film edibile innovativo realizzato per la sostituzione di additivi e conservanti utilizzati nei prodotti da forno e per la pasticceria

L'invenzione consente di ottenere, senza utilizzazione di solventi ad alto impatto ambientale e di difficile smaltimento, materiale da imballaggio per alimenti completamente biodegradabile, a basso costo e ridotto impatto ambientale.

L'invenzione si riferisce ad un’associazione a base di inulina, in particolare di inulina in miscela con acqua e grassi a basso contenuto di acidi grassi saturi e colesterolo, utilizzabile per sostituire, integralmente o parzialmente, i grassi tradizionalmente 5 addizionati in numerose formulazioni alimentari

The preswent invention concerns a biodegradable and compostable material for packaging obtainable from the use of the whole wastes of production and transformation of food of vegatable origin in a manufacturing process comprising a preliminary step of drying, a step of controlling the particle size of said waste and, if necessary, a step of grinding of said waste to a particle size in the range between 200 and 300 microns, and a step of extrusion-cooking.