With the accelerated pace of life, more and more people choose to eat fast food, which is a porridge is essential. But take away porridge and their own boil porridge why the taste difference so big? Sweet sticky glutinous takeaway porridge in the end add what? Is it harmful to your health?
In fact, the fact that the porridge is sticky is due to the addition of thickeners. Thickener as a food additive, mainly used to improve the quality and increase the viscosity of food, thereby changing the physical properties of food. For most thickeners, their basic chemical composition is protein, sugar and its derivatives. Such as hydroxypropyl di starch phosphate is a starch derivative, the main component of gelatin is a protein, pectin is a dietary fiber, the vast majority of thickeners into the human body is not digested and absorbed, if plastic, carrageenan and so on; A small number of thickeners such as gelatin, can be digested by the body, after digestion will be broken down into amino acids, and then involved in human metabolism.
In our daily diet, the presence of thickeners is everywhere. Added a thickening agent, will make the taste of food more delicious. Friends who have done seaweed egg soup will find that we do at home seaweed egg soup is often seaweed, soup and egg flowers, the three are not fully integrated together; and the restaurant selling seaweed egg soup is different, Looking forward to the seaweed egg flower soup floating full of egg flowers and seaweed. Where is the secret? The reason is that the addition of starch thicken, so that seaweed egg soup becomes more thick, so that seaweed and egg flowers evenly suspended in the soup. Starch is the most common thickener in life, mainly from corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes and other food.
Many parents like to buy a variety of candy for their children, the children are also very fond of some flexible soft candy, such as QQ sugar, rainbow sugar and other fruit flavored gel candy. In order to make candy to eat chewy, these candy in the production will add a variety of thickeners, mainly pectin, gelatin or carrageenan. If you do not add these thickeners, the fruit gel candy will lose its elasticity and lose its unique taste and experience.
Yogurt is a lot of friends like the drink, sweet and sour taste of the capture of all ages of friends, and for the emergence of lactose intolerance of the crowd, yogurt is their gospel, not only solve the problems have been plagued by them , Also tasted the delicious yogurt. But there are also careful friends will find that our own yogurt is relatively thin, as the supermarket sells yogurt sticky. In fact, the secret of yogurt sticky is to add a variety of thickeners. If we carefully read the ingredients table of yogurt, you will find a problem: pectin, xanthan gum or agar and other thickeners are in the yogurt ingredients table. With these thickeners, yogurt drink not only delicious, taste and more sticky. If we make yogurt at home, add some thickener, you can also make thick yogurt.
Thickener safety is that we are most concerned about, in fact, the safety of thickeners are generally higher, so in many foods are not limited its dosage. Such as gelatin pectin, carrageenan and agar use is suitable for all types of food, the amount of the standard is in accordance with the production needs. In the production of the use of different foods need to use different thickeners. Such as sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, is mainly used for ice cream, popsicles, pastries, biscuits, fruit puffed food and instant noodles; agar, gelatin, oxidized starch, oxidized hydroxypropyl starch, gellan gum, the use of these thickeners The most extensive, all kinds of food can be used. So, when the porridge in the end there is no need to add thickener? If we add a thickener to the purpose of making the food taste better, it does not seem to violate the use of food additives principles. On the network a lot of selling special fire some "porridge treasure", the main ingredients are actually starch or modified starch.
Food thickeners just look more mysterious, reveal the veil in-depth understanding, you will find that they are inspired by the traditional process made. The so-called "synthetic" "chemical products", its security is also a rigorous and scientific procedures to test after the sale. Paste when adding thickener, may be in the raw materials on some cut corners (such as rice can be less like the main raw material), but at least in the taste has improved, and therefore is not a security issue. Therefore, the thickener, no we imagined so terrible, there is no problem in safety.