Use butteroil to make lower-fat table spreads

Researchers at the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research (1605 Linden Dr., Babcock Hall, Madison, WI 53706) are in the early stages of a three-year project to make reduced-fat (60%) table spread products using mono- and diglyceride emulsifiers from butteroil. They are interested in industrial collaborations to optimize their technology and examine specific applications.

Much of the current focus on developing table spreads is on reduced-fat formulations. They also are being considered as vehicles for delivering nutraceuticals and other healthy ingredients. Butteroil holds advantages over other types of fats and oils in this application because of inherent flavoring properties and low trans-fatty-acid content compared with hydrogenated vegetable oils. The objective of this effort is to develop entirely dairy-based, reduced-fat table spread formulations with the ultimate goal of trying to expand the use of milk fat. Scientists intend to optimize the use of butteroil, butteroil fractions and functional derivatives of butteroil in table spread products.

Investigators are screening for formulations that yield stable, dairy-based, reduced-fat, water-in-oil emulsions. They're optimizing formulations and processing protocols. The initial phase of work has focused on standardizing analytical and experimental techniques needed for screening formulations to determine their suitability for pilot-scale trials.

Efforts are focusing on 60% fat spreads, with a control or standard spread containing commercial soft margarine and distilled monoacylglycerols to serve as a reference for comparing the dairy-based spreads. Homogenization speed, time and temperature have been evaluated and optimized within narrow ranges for each parameter.

Scientists are investigating relationships between reduced interfacial surface tension and the percent of monoacylglycerol included in the oil phase in order to determine optimum levels of monoacylglycerol required for each type of formulation. Early experiments indicate the reference formulation behaves in a classical fashion with regard to increased levels of glycerol. When butteroil is used as the continuous phase or when butteroil-derived glycerol fractions are used as the emulsifying agent, glycerol levels do not increase significantly.

Scientists intend to test dairy-based systems at 40% and 60% fat levels to see if they're suitable for pilot-scale evaluation.

Further information. Kerry Kaylegian; phone: [phone]; fax: [phone]; email: [e-mail].