Project description
Innovative processing will help put a healthy fat substitute on store shelves
The last couple of decades have witnessed a significant interest in developing replacements or substitutes for saturated and trans fats in food to address the challenge of increasing cases of obesity and heart disease. Oleogels have emerged as promising candidates to replace so-called hard-stock fat, the solid fat in butter or margarine that is critically linked to their consistency. However, these compounds lack stability during storage, inhibiting their use. The EU-funded ULTRA-OLEO project is developing an innovative way to control the crystallisation of oleogels from liquid to solid phase to prolong shelf-life, overcoming the barrier to integration in a variety of food products.
Objective
Oleogels are lipid-based materials that contain 85–99.5% of liquid oil whereas the rest is structuring molecules called oleogelators. They were introduced as saturated and hydrogenated fat substitutes to fight the adverse effects of excessive fat consumption in the diet such as obesity. Obesity is a global problem that nowadays involves billion of adults and millions of children. The annual healthcare costs related to treating diseases caused by/related to obesity is 60 billion euro in Europe and 210 billion dollars in USA. Oleogels can be used to reduce obesity outbreaks by substituting saturated fats. Unfortunately, oleogel storage instability impedes these materials from becoming the “fat of the future”. Much effort has been directed to explore strategies to improve oleogel performance such as formulation and processing. The proposed strategies are not able to precisely control the forming crystal network and can also lead to oxidized oleogels. To obtain oleogels with long storage stability it is necessary to carefully control the forming crystalline network without inducing adverse effects such as oxidation.
To this aim, I will develop a new, economic, and environmentally friendly technology that can modify the structure of oleogels to prolong oleogel storage stability, bringing together food science, acoustic physics and engineering. To create such a technology, three goals are set: (i) develop a treatment chamber, (ii) optimize treatment of monoglyceride-containing oleogel, (iii) optimize treatment of wax-containing and phytosterol-containing oleogels. To identify the effect of the treatments, nano and microstructure, oil retention ability, and oxidation mechanisms are studied during and soon after the treatment, and during storage.
The outcome of this proposal is a technology that can finely and precisely direct the crystallization process orienting lipid crystals in controllable shapes/patterns with the final aim to prolong oleogel storage stability.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences chemical sciences electrochemistry electrolysis
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences geology mineralogy crystallography
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules lipids
- medical and health sciences health sciences nutrition obesity
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2018
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
00014 Helsinki
Finland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.