Design of a high protein, no added sugar pistachio spread using oleogel as fat replacer

The production of multicomponent food items requires a correct ratio among the ingredients when specific quality parameters must be obtained. Recently, there has been an increase in the trend of consumption of healthy products, low in sugar and saturated fat and with increased protein intake. Nut based spreads need a high percentage of sugars and fat to guarantee their spreadability and mouth-melting behaviour. The present work was then aimed to design a pistachio spread without added sugars, low in saturated fat, spreadable and inducing positive sensory attributes to the consumer. An optimal formulation of a no added sugars and high protein pistachio spread was obtained by using olive oil based oleogel as unsaturated fat replacer and increasing the amount of milk originated powders (skimmed milk powder and whey protein concentrate) as structural modifier. The optimization, done by mixture design, considered technological and sensorial aspects together. The experimental design consisted of twelve different formulations in which oleogel, whey proteins and skimmed milk were set as the ingredients while spreadability, oil binding capacity, and sensory attributes like meltability, mouth adhesiveness and undesirable flavours were used as responses. Polynomial regression models were used to fit the experimental data for each type of investigated response of pistachio spreads. The optimized formulation in terms of the selected quality responses was identified in a spread characterized by 20% of olive oil basedoleogel, 13.16% of whey proteins and 26.84% of skimmed milk, achieving an overall desirability score of 0.56. The optimized spread formulation showed a spreadability of 11.71 N mm, OBC of 95.88% and sensory scores of 5.61, 9.31 and 5.42 for meltability, adhesiveness to mouth and other flavours respectively.