X-ray Technology Helps Cargill Food Scientists
X-ray technology helps Cargill and others, like the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, provide a rapid method for sodium detection in some food products.
It’s unlikely you have seen an X-ray view of your food. Cargill Salt hadn’t either until our scientists decided to look at how salt is distributed throughout a finished food product at a molecular level. Cargill wanted to know where salt resides in specific foods and how it interacts with other ingredients. The intention was that the salt ingredients would be distributed in a way that optimizes flavor and functionality. Cargill’s food research team helps customers by using x-ray technologies so products can be understood inside as well as out. In order to begin answering the salt distribution question, Cargill scientists looked to a recent experiment investigating sodium levels in cheese conducted by researchers in Wisconsin.
Typically, the method of sodium analysis used by cheese manufacturers often overestimates the sodium level in cheese that is made with sodium replacers, like potassium chloride. 1 This method, called the Volhard method, indirectly determines sodium levels by analysis of chloride and assumes all chloride comes from sodium chloride.1 Researchers from the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison, saw this as an opportunity for improvement. Published recently in the Journal of Dairy Science, the researchers studied a method that provides a great example of using X-ray technology in food science.
The researchers explored the use of a mineral analysis technique used in the mining industry, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), as an alternative method of sodium detection in cheese.1 The scientists used XRF to assess the sodium levels of multiple commercial cheese samples and, for most commercial natural cheeses, the results were in agreement with those obtained using the reference method. 1 Because of the impressive sensitivity of the XRF technique, it can calculate sodium in most natural cheeses in less than five minutes.1
As x-ray technologies become more ubiquitous, food product developers, like the scientists at Cargill, can utilize these cutting edge techniques “to help them better predict the structure of the food product and try to correlate that to sensory attributes,” according to Janice Johnson, PhD, Technical Service and Applications Leader at Cargill. 2
Using an example of recent proprietary Cargill research, Johnson explains, “Leveraging tools like x-ray tomography can give scientists a new perspective about their product.” A sample of chocolate with sea salt was scanned using x-ray tomography to reveal the location of salt throughout the product. From the data, the particle size and distribution of the salt could be identified in a non-destructive manner, which is not typical for most other analytical techniques. The data revealed that a lot of the salt had settled to the bottom of the chocolate mold, which happens to be the top of the chocolate bar. When allowed to slowly melt in the mouth, the consumer will have a very different salty eating experience depending on which side of the chocolate is placed on the tongue.”2
Energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS), which allows a scientist to perform elemental analysis in a sample, was used to determine if there was a difference between samples of milk chocolate caramel and dark chocolate sea salt caramel. The results revealed that there was a difference in salt distribution between the chocolate and caramel layers in the dark chocolate sea salt caramel, with a majority being located in the caramel,” observes Johnson. 2
X-ray technology is just one example of how Cargill’s food research team accelerates progress in product development projects by bringing scientific and technical resources and expertise into our partnerships.
1 Stankey, J. A., Akbulut, C., Romero, J. E., and Govindasamy-Lucey, S. (2015). Evaluation of X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy as a method for the rapid and direct determination of sodium in cheese. Journal of Dairy Science, 98(8):1–12.
2 Johnson, J. (2015) Leveraging the Performance of Salt. The Manufacturing Confectioner, 95(1):69.