Effect of dry heat treatment of egg white powder on its functional, nutritional and allergenic properties
Résumé
Egg white is a key ingredient in many food products as it combines high nutritional quality with
excellent functional properties. However, it is also one of the leading causes of food allergy in childhood.
Dehydrated egg white is a common form of industrial egg white. To increase the functional properties,
egg white powders are heated which may change protein antigenicity and susceptibility to digestion. The
present work highlighted the effect of a wide range of dry heating rates (from 1 to 10 days between 60
and 90 C) simultaneously on the interfacial properties, antigenicity and susceptibility to in vitro
digestion of egg white proteins. Thanks to a powerful statistical methodology, i.e. multiple factor analysis
(MFA), that enables to consider all the data in a common space, intermediate dry heating treatments (2
e5 days at 70 C or 1e2 days at 80 or 90 C) were found to be good compromise to improve egg white
functionality without enhancing too much protein resistance to digestion or protein antigenicity.