New coating said to help foods taste fried

UA division devises starch that adds flavor, trims fat

Professor Ya-Jane Wang describes a new starch she developed that is able to absorb oil, giving baked foods a fried-food taste.
Professor Ya-Jane Wang describes a new starch she developed that is able to absorb oil, giving baked foods a fried-food taste.

FAYETTEVILLE -- Ask Ya-Jane Wang why baked chicken nuggets aren't as popular with kids as fried ones and you'll get a simple answer.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette

Professor Ya-Jane Wang dips a nugget into a batter that makes baked foods taste more like fried foods.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette

Ya-Jane Wang, a professor of food science with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, helped develop a process that makes baked foods taste like fried foods without all of the fat.

Baked nuggets taste bad.

What makes a fried nugget yummy, explained Wang, a professor of food science with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, is fat -- plain and simple.

But introducing fat into a baked item is tricky.

Mixing even a small amount of fat into the starch pre-coatings used to adhere seasonings to the food -- be it a nugget, chicken wing or onion ring -- causes a clumpy, gooey mess. Added fat in batter coatings tends to separate, leaving an oily residue on the surface of the mixture.

To introduce liquid oil to the process, Wang helped develop a coating using a starch modified with enzymes. The modified starch is honeycombed with tiny holes able to absorb oil. The result is a coating process that doesn't clump or separate and allows baked foods to compete with fried foods where taste is concerned but with a reduced fat content of about 60 percent.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website notes that poor diet and inactivity contribute to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and high blood pressure. The CDC, along with other groups of experts, advise setting nutrition standards that make less nutritious foods and beverages not so readily available in schools and state government facilities.

Tekcaptial Plc, a United Kingdom-based intellectual property services outfit, obtained an exclusive license to the UA's patent-pending process. The company found the UA process through Tekcapital's global discovery search engine, which identifies new technologies available from about 4,000 research institutions in 160 countries, in every area of science, medicine and technology.

Clifford Gross, executive chairman of Tekcapital, said in an email that the company was searching for a new approach to reduce fat and/or calories in widely consumed foods.

He said an attractive aspect of the UA process is it can be incorporated into existing coating lines without modification and uses all commercially available products. He added that the company's directors believe the technology represents an important intellectual property opportunity with the potential for mass-market adoption through licensing deals.

"Our aim is to commercialize the technology with food companies that can benefit from improving the nutritional content of their product offerings for all of their customers," Gross wrote.

Lisa Childs, the UA Division of Agriculture assistant vice president for technology commercialization, said her office's goal is finding applications for the division's discoveries.

"Licensing is an important way for us to get the research out of the lab and into the world," she said.

Wang notes that one of the advantages of the UA discovery is it can be easily implemented in a commercial setting without any retooling. She notes that the process also calls for the use of steam as well as baking, adding that that's common with many food products today.

She said it's likely that Tekcapital will further refine the process to make it as efficient and commercially viable as possible. In the end, the selling point of the process is the creation of baked items with the taste and texture of fried foods and, for that, one ingredient is key.

"You have to have the fat," Wang said.

SundayMonday Business on 02/22/2015

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