Study of high pressure and temperature effects on heather honey during storage: Electronic tongue and physicochemical properties
Artigo de Conferência
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resumo
Honey is a natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera, which has great potential to serve
as a natural food antioxidant. The physicochemical quality criteria of honey are well specified by
the European Legislation (EC Directive 2001/110). The quality properties of honey can be
diminished by the influence of heating. As an alternative to the conventional thermal
pasteurization, nonthermal
high pressure processing (HPP) has potential to produce safe food with
similar characteristics to the raw unprocessed foods. The aim of this study was to investigate the
effect of HPP (725 MPa for 10 minutes) and HPP with temperature (725 MPa for 10 minutes at 50
°C) on physicochemical properties (moisture, pH, electrical conductivity, free acidity, diastase
activity and hydroxymethylfurfural content) of a heather honey in comparison with thermal
treatment (75 °C for 5 minutes) and unprocessed honey. The effect of storage (6 months) in
processed and unprocessed samples was also investigated. The results showed significant
differences in some physicochemical parameters, for instance, the hydroxymethylfurfural content,
an indicator of honeys' freshness that depends on several factors, such as temperature, time of
heating and storage conditions. An electronic tongue (ET) with lipidic membranes was used to
evaluate the differences between all honey groups. A linear discriminant analysis to the ET results
showed that the processed and unprocessed honey samples at day 0 (when treatments were
applied) and after the storage have matrix differences that allows a complete separation of groups.
The correlation between physicochemical and electronic tongue data showed the advantages of this
data fusion.
