The Role of the Temperature Factor in Hydration of Food Caseinate

A widely accepted direction in developing formulas of specialized food products, in particular enteral food products, is the introduction of proteins with a high amino acid value, such as dairy proteins, into their formulations. The basis is not only the high nutrition value of the proteins, but also their good digestibility. In the production of liquid enteral food products, the dispersion of the formulation ingredients in water is a necessary stage of the technological process. In the case of the production of dry enteral food products, they should be reconstituted in water before use. The object of the study was the stage of hydration of sodium caseinate with a protein mass fraction of 58.53% (Russia). The aim of the work was to study the effect of the temperature factor and the concentration of sodium caseinate on the rate of its hydration. The objectives of the research included obtaining aqueous dispersions with different contents of sodium caseinate under various temperature conditions, mathematical processing, and analysis of experimental data. The objects of the study were aqueous dispersions of sodium caseinate. Variable factors were the sodium caseinate concentration from 1 to 10% in increments of 1% and dispersion temperature of 40, 60 and 80 °C. Controlled parameter was the duration of food caseinate dissolution. Under the conditions of the experiment, sodium caseinate hydration was feasible at 40 °C. However, only at the ingredient concentration of 1 and 2% the dissolution duration was acceptable for preparing the mixture for reconstitution at home or in hospital and was 15 and 17 minutes, respectively. At higher sodium caseinate content in the mixture, the process was significantly lengthened and at the ingredient mass fraction of 10% it reached 57 minutes. The dissolution time was reduced at 80 °C. Such temperature conditions are applicable in the technology of production of liquid enteral food products and can be combined with the process of mixture pasteurization.