AZTI-Tecnalia have isolated a vegetable fibre from tomato which can be used in making functional meat and bakery foods

The incorporation of this ingredient from tomato has enabled the enhancing of the nutritional quality of products already used given that fibre is an ingredient that has beneficial physiological effects (preventing and protecting against a number of illnesses in the body). That is, fibre enrichment principally augments the added value of foodstuffs nutritionally.

Likewise, the use of tomato fibre creates products with new sensorial attributes, and thus can be used as texture-modifying agents, as an ingredient for pleasant smells and tastes (even to the point of avoiding the use of other additives such as colorants) and the new product can give rise to potentially functional and enriched foodstuffs with new technological characteristics, enabling a number of new properties regarding absorption and/or retention of water, oil, etc.

AZTI-Tecnalia is targeting the obtaining and characterisation of new food bio-molecules based on novel sources. An example of this is obtaining fibre from the vegetable sub-products of the tomato canning industry. Exhaustive research using various techniques for the identifying of the chemical composition of the diet fibre and for its primordial fraction – non-starch polysaccharides, enable a comparison with and a prediction of its subsequent behaviour as a technological and/or functional ingredient in foodstuffs based on these new bio-molecules.

AZTI-Tecnalia recently participated in the International Symposium on the Separation and Characterisation of Natural and Synthetic Macromolecules, where it presented the latest results obtained from this line of research into food fibres, specifically those involving non-starch polysaccharides from tomato fibre.