Dr. Ben Kew publishes in paper on tribology and mouthfeel of smoothies in Food Hydrocolloids

A very comprehensive work led by Dr. Ben Kew (Postdoctoral Fellow, Project SusProFood) titled "Relating tribology to astringency perception in acidic plant protein-fortified fiber-based smoothies" is now published in Food Hydrocolloids. In this work, Ben in collaboration with Xinyi Guo (Masters Project student), Innocent Drinks and authors from School of Food Science and Nutrition at The University of Leeds show how alternative proteins influence mouthfeel of fibre-rich matrices such as model and real smoothie. Ten alternative proteins spanning across pea, fava, chickpea, red lentil and rapeseed were examined using a complementary suites of rheology, tribology and sensory properties. Of course, acidic pH and fibres make things challenging to understand as you can imagine - so diverse frictional dissipation. What was really strikingly, in mouthfeel evaluation, model smoothies effectively replicated the behavior of real smoothies when formulated with plant proteins, highlighting how initial screenings are powerful. A number of significant in vitro-in vivo correlations were found in our study, notably with boundary friction and rheology parameters where we showcase the effectiveness in our method's ability to predict mouthfeel attributes in complex matrices. Overall, this study showcases that measuring tribology, rheology and simply assessing insoluble fraction in a fibre-matrix model can be powerful in vitro techniques that can directly help predict mouthfeel attributes before assessment is done by a trained panel. In addition, our findings validate the use of model smoothies to effectively narrow down a vast range of plant proteins, which can be helpful in fast-tracking product development to eventually build a comprehensive National Knowledgebase to transition towards more tasty sustainable protein foods with increased protein security and protein equity. Check out the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodhyd.2025.111770