What will happen if pour water and oil together into a cup? After a while, there will be two layers: one layer is water, and the other layer is oil. There is a clear divide between them. Even if you try your best to stir and mix again they will be layered after a while. Why? Because both substances are hard to merging and blending. At this time, add a few drops of emulsifying agents into the glass, you will find two immiscible liquids mixed together slowly, forming a homogeneous emulsion.
Emulsifiers in food is widespread in the processing of foods. Food usually contains water, protein, fat, sugars and other components of mixed materials, this has a lot of material that is not “inclusive”. For example, if the oil and water can not be fused, the appearance and taste of ice creams will not be good. Milk, in fact, is a typical “emulsion” foods, which contain water and milk. These two substances do not blend with each other, but water and milk form the milk fat structure surrounded by water molecules in coordination with the milk protein. Here milk protein plays an emulsifier role.
There are many reports say food additives contribute to obesity, this completely distorts the findings of the study. It is an overstating result that eat too much may lead to obesity and diabetes. If eat too much ice cream cause obesity, it’s not just because of the emulsifier, but due to sugar and fat.
Emulsifying agents have functions of the emulsification in the processes of a variety of materials, as well as improve and enhance food quality and stability. Application of emulsifier in baking food is also very widespread. During the dough mixing, emulsifiers can strengthen the dough on the endurance of mechanical processing, improve flexibility, toughness, strength and mixing the dough, reduce the dough damage and improve the dough’s water absorption rate. At the dough fermentation stage, emulsifiers can improve the fermentation capacity of dough, the dough will form a thin film on the surface and is very easy to collapse, emulsifiers can improve dough fermentation tolerance and prevent distortion. Meanwhile, emulsifiers can prevent the bread staling. The bread hardens in a few days, the reason is starch retrogradation. Emulsifier is an ideal bread preservative and antioxidant. In the production of bread, emulsifiers can prevent the starch grains from aging, so that the taste can be improved.
At present, there are about 70 kinds of universal emulsifiers, and international authorities assessed that the emulsifier is safe, most of them have no limitation to the daily tolerable intake. As a result, it can be considered that the allowed to use food emulsifiers are relatively safe, so reasonable use is not harmful to health.
