New paper published in Food Reserach International of effect of high protein concentration on surface property

A new paper titled "Comparing frictional behaviour of plant and dairy proteins: Case study on high protein concentration" has been published in Food Research International by Dr. Frances Brown (ex PhD Student, BBSRC CTP andMondelez), Dr. Siavash Soltanamahdi (Ex Postdoctoral Reserach Fellow, ERC LubSat Project) in collaboration with coauthors from School of Food Scienec and Nutrition as well as Mondelez International. Often high protein connentration may lead to impaired mouthfeel. The overall idea in this work was to characterise this in depth to understand the frictional behaviour of non-purified plant proteins (i.e. pea protein concentrate (PPc) and soy protein isolate (SPI)) compared to dairy proteins (whey protein isolate (WPI) and sodium caseinate (NaCas). As one might expect, owing to protein-protein aggregation, plant proteins showed prominent shear thinning behaviour, unlike dairy proteins. Often high viscosity is linked to betetr mouthfeel but often this is not teh case as frictional properties are not measured. The study demonstrated that the low friction coeffiecient values in dairy proteins correlated with increased adsorption  (∼1.5–5× more) of the elastic films with higher film thickness as compared to plant proteins. To conclude, a combination of tribology with adsorption techniques and rheology offers a powerful approach to identify quantitative differences between plant and animal proteins. Work in ongoing in teh lab whteher such behaviour is specific to protein types tested and also presence of oil (such as in emulsion systems) can completely remove those mouthfeel issues. To read the full paper, here is the link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2025.116322