CHARACTERISTICS OF GELLAN GUM BASED FOOD GELS

Fruit-based gels with gellan gum as the gelling agent was prepared. Textural attributes of the gellan gum gels, formed with different concentrations of the gum (0.5-3.0%) and sugar and/or pineapple juice, were determined employing the methods of large-deformation uniaxial compression and stress relaxation. Fracture stress/energy markedly increases with an increase in the concentration of gellan gum while fracture strain exhibits a marginal effect. The change in these compressive textural parameters is more pronounced for sugar added samples compared with gels without sugar Marked decay in stress relaxation curves was observed; the extent of relaxation decreases marginally with cm increase in gum content up to 2% but shows much lesser values beyond 2% addition. The sugar added samples exhibit lesser relaxation characteristics hut higher relaxation times indicating elastic characteristics compared with samples without sugar Use of gellan gum provides an innovative method for developing fruit juice based gels as a convenience food because of attractive transparent appearance and textural attributes.