Team members - Context and objectives - Research topics - Methods and Equipment - Publications - Highlighted results

Team leader: Alain Riaublanc

Permanent team members:

• Researchers and engineers:   Marc Anton, Claire Berton-Carabin, Adeline Boire, Elisabeth David-Briand,  Catherine Garnier, Audrey Geairon, Alice Kermarrec, Patricia Le Bail,  Christelle Lopez, Sébastien Marze, Anne Meynier, Hanitra Rabesona, Alain Riaublanc, Véronique Solé, Ha Phuong Ta, Michèle Viau, Magalie Weber
• Technicians et assistant engineers:   Valérie Beaumal,  Lucie Birault, Joëlle Davy, Camille Jonchère

Temporary staff members:

• phD students:   Clara Leguet, Elena Keuleyan, Adilson Roberto Locali Pereira
• Post-Doc or engineers:   Nour Doumani, Perrine Gelebart, Sophie Laurent, Jeanne Kergomard

Thesis defended recently:

Manon Chemin (2022), Juliette Palier (2022), Mathilde Roze (2022), Rémy Cochereau (2021), Monique Khodeir (2020), Maude Ducrocq (2021), Line Sahli (2020) , Perrine Gélébart (2019),  Doina Crucean (2019),  Hoang Thanh Nguyen (2018), Chloé Bailhache (2018), Thibault Loiseleux (2017), William Dudefoi (2017), Céline Lafarge (2016)

The agri-food sector is currently facing a major transition, with a strong societal demand for healthy, natural, and minimally processed foods. In addition, current food production systems have worrying environmental consequences, so it is urgent to implement more sustainable alternatives. However, for a transition to healthy and sustainable food to occur and persist, it is essential that changes do not compromise the sensory quality of food, such as taste and texture, nor its health and nutritional qualities while remaining affordable for consumers.

In this context, we seek to master new sources of ingredients and understand digestion phenomena for the construction of food matrices adapted to ensure the physical and chemical stability of foods and optimize the release of nutrients, taking into account the sustainability of the food to health effects.

The challenge is clearly to ensure a continuum between the construction and deconstruction of complex matrices through a multi-scale approach, from interfaces to matrices. The objectives of our project is to understand the impact of different structural scales on the dynamics of construction and the deconstruction of complex matrices under use conditions.

The main outcome is to be able to predict the benefit/risk ratio of a food matrix based on the knowledge of its multiscale structural parameters.

The complex matrices we consider are emulsions, foams, and gels, and we are targeting more particularly lipidic nutrients (polyunsaturated fatty acids, vitamins, antioxidants) and biopolymer assemblies (proteins, polysaccharides, polyphenols).
   

Skills and expertise: Interfaces, Food matrices, Formulation, Deconstruction, Bioaccessibility, Lipids, Oxidation, Multiscale structures, Release dynamics, Assemblies, Gels, Foams, Emulsions

Our research project is divided into two axes:

Axis 1: Improving the sustainability of our food with a focus on new ingredients and processes

This axis aims to respond to new consumer expectations and the growing desire to use highly nutritious and organic ingredients, avoid additives, and reduce the environmental impact of our food. In this context, the development of foods or ingredients that are naturally more functional, healthy and sustainable, is booming. In the coming years, we will focus on designing foods to reduce the number of ingredients used and formulating to replace artificial ingredients with natural alternatives:

•     Development of new ingredients
•     Development of more sustainable processes

Axis 2: Improving the nutritional quality of foods with a particular focus on lipids and sugars

Within the team, we have chosen to focus on two types of foods, those that are in the form of a dense starchy matrix, often rich in sugar, and those that contain a lipidic phase, dispersed in the form of droplets, in a gelled or non-gelled aqueous phase, and are therefore oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions.

For starch matrices, the problem of improving nutritional qualities is mainly related to a reduction of sugar, while for emulsions, it is a question of increasing the content of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), ensuring their physical and chemical stability and improving their availability as well as that of lipophilic compounds of nutritional interest.

• Design and digestion of lipid assemblies
• Reduction of sugar in starch matrices

• Interfaces studies
• Spatio-temporal dynamics of molecules and particles within matrices
• Monitoring of lipid oxidation
• In vitro monitoring of digestion
• Rheology of complex matrices
• Implementation of innovative processes for food design

We also have facilities for protein purification and  lipid extraction and analysis.