CLSM Real-time Scan: Capture your product’s characteristics in one image

Effective food innovations need thorough characterisation of the food products under development. Currently, important market drivers include: - Clean label - Applying plant/alternative proteins - Reducing fat, sugar or salt - Ingredient flexibility - Sustainable process All these needs will be met by NIZO’s Q3-2024 offer: CLSM Real-time Scan: Capture your product’s characteristics in one image. CLSM (Microstructural analysis by confocal microscopy) is a powerful technique to visualize different ingredients in one image. It is a highly efficient approach to quickly scan and tackle stability issues, tailor mouthfeel, and optimise products and processes. An example of applying CLSM: One of our customers observed a major product instability in their soup but did not understand why. NIZO experts analyzed with CLSM representative samples of the product to find the root cause. By visualization of protein, starch and fat simultaneously with fluorescent staining the ingredient causing the instability was identified. This allowed an effective process adaption preventing further instability issues. Identifying changes in the microstructure of your product is not only relevant to avoid product defects, but also to understand the mechanism during oral processing. This is crucial for understanding and tailoring mouthfeel attributes such as creaminess, powderiness, juiciness, and astringency. Analysing products with CLSM before, during, and after oral processing allows engineering of these attributes. Choose a CLSM Real-time Scan with NIZO to understand the performance of your reformulated product and/or ingredients!