Influence of Citric Acid Microencapsulated with Microwave on Some Sensory Properties of Chewing Gum

Over the past few decades، microwave processing and its high potential capabilities has attracted food scientists where they preferred to replace the old and time-bearing prevalent methods with this swift and simple method. Application of microwaves for microencapsulation is an innovative and new method in which the core and shell were combined at an appropriate ratio and treated by microwaves in order to microencapsulate the core material by coating one. In this research، the citric acid powder at two various size (100–500 and <100 micron) was microencapsulated at different ratios (1:5 and 1:10) by casein and inulin، at various microwave powers (up to 1200 W) for 50 to 250 seconds. Findings of qualitative evaluation of microcapsules by laboratory binocular، scanning electron microscope photographs as well as particle size analysis illustrated that the optimum conditions namely ratio and microwave power for microencapsulation of citric acid by both casein and inulin were 1:10 and 1200 W with slightly different treating time where it was 150 and 50 seconds، respectively. In the next step، these two microcapsules along with uncoated citric acid powder as well as commercial microcapsules of citric acid were added to the ribbon type chewing gum and the sensory evaluation regarding texture، stability of sour taste and aftertaste was done by a semi-trained taste panel. The findings revealed that in terms of sour taste stability and aftertastes، the chewing gum containing citric acid microencapsulated with inulin had highest score whereas with regard to texture one treated with the commercial microcapsules gained the highest score. In addition، the lowest sensorial scores were belonged to samples which treated by citric acid microencapsulated with casein. Finally، for the first time on a real foodstuff the practical capability of this novel، simple، low cost، and rapid microencapsulation technique was confirmed.