Studying the effect of inulin and milk protein concentrate as fat replacers on the rheological and textural properties of low fat ice cream

In recent years, reducing the fat content and production of dietetic ice cream has been taken in consideration. However, reducing the amount of fat in ice cream products, can negatively affect product acceptability through making some changes in viscosity and textural attributes. Fat replacers are components that can replace some of the fat in the food served. At the same time due to lower calorie content it can lead to a decrease in the production of energy by food products. In this research, the effect of a protein based (milk protein concentrate) and a carbohydrate-based (inulin) fat replacer in three levels (0, 2 and 4%) on the rheological and textural properties of low fat (5% fat) ice cream was investigated. All the mixtures showed pseudoplastic flow behaviour and the apparent viscosity decreased with increasing shear rate. Using mpc led to increasing consistency coefficient and decreasing flow behavior index of ice cream mixtures while no significant differences was observed between mixtures containing inulin in the case of these two parameters. Apparent viscosity values increased with increasing the amount of mpc and inulin. Also viscosity values for the mixtures containing mpc were higher than those with inulin. No significant difference was obtained for ice cream samples containing inulin in the case of hardness and the highest amount of hardness was associated to the samples with mpc. Ice cream containing 4% inulin had the highest amount of adhesiveness and no significant difference was detected between other samples.