BACKGROUND
Our food system needs to change to provide more sustainable diets in the future. This will require transformative processing technologies, able to handle different types of ingredients. As proteins play a major role both as structural building blocks  and as important nutritional components in foods, alternative proteins to replace those of animal origin have gained significant interest in recent years.

In general, proteins’ functionalities are modulated by processing conditions. Yet, more research is needed to build knowledge on the processing-induced structural changes to the plant proteins’ fundamental molecular level. An increased understanding of how to best utilize the plant proteins will assist the innovation of a new generation of sustainable functional foods.

AIM 
This project will aim at studying how protein-rich powders can be hydrated and processed under shear and temperature changes to obtain novel structures and textures, with a focus on interactions. 

RESEARCH OUTLINE
In this project, we will test plant-based protein concentrates and isolates, alone or in combination with other ingredients, for their ability to create structures under relevant processing conditions, and we will analyse their microstructure. We will build model systems that could be used to validate hypotheses on the dynamics of the processes.