Research

While dysphagia (oropharyngeal dysphagia, OD) is primarily studied from a medical point of view, many issues remain unclear in the interplay between food properties, culinary processes and oral processing. In particular, the interplay between physical variables such as oral surface adhesion ("stickiness") , internal structural cohesion ("binding strength"), fracture behavior, and oral motor behavior as a function of gender and age are poorly understood. As a result, many approaches to improving the quality of life of people suffering from OD through food texture modifications are often subjective and not based on scientific principles. This increases the risk of unsafe and inefficient food intake, leading to medical and economic consequences such as increased pneumonia rates, malnutrition, and prolonged hospital stays. In addition, this has a significant impact on the quality of life for affected patients. The main objective of the project is to identify essential physical aspects that control surface adhesion, structural cohesion and fracture behavior in food products. Based on these parameters, applicable guidelines for targeted product creation in consistency-modified food forms will be generated. These guidelines will be tested on healthy individuals based on model foods and kitchen-engineered prototypes in order to obtain systematic feedback for further investigations and applications in patients with dysphagia.

Wihtin this project, selected vegetable raw materials from local and sustainable production, as well as the foodstuffs produced and preserved from them through lactic acid fermentation, are to be microbiologically characterized. Several of the research partner's products are being examined in detail at various stages of production, right through to retained samples. Both, modern microbiological and molecular biological methods are used. The aim of the work is to record the micro-ecological conditions in the entire product cycle and to derive knowledge to stabilize and optimize product quality.

The formation of GF doughs and production of GF breads is a technological challenge as GF flours are not able to form viscoelastic doughs when kneaded with water. Although a lot of research activities and additives improved the current quality of GF bread, the overall quality is still low and GF bread is less well accepted by consumers. Novel research revealed that arabinoxylans (AX) could imitate the gluten-network to some degree because of its cross-linking ability through ferulic acid residues. However, carbohydrate systems alone cannot reach the outstanding properties of gluten. Thus, a new approach by enzymatically induced cross-linking of proteins with AX via ferulic acid and tyrosine residues seems to be a solution to further improve gluten-free dough systems. As suitable raw materials, oat, maize and rice were identified due to their high quality AX and rich abundance of tyrosine in proteins. The aim of this project is to use these ingredients and cross-linking enzymes to establish a protein-AX network for gluten-free starch based systems with superior properties. The novel enzymatically induced protein-AX network will have similar properties like gluten and thus improving quality of GF dough systems to so far unknown quality. Furthermore, new insights in the complex structure of baking related cereal polymers and thus novel knowledge will be achieved.