The Effect of Atmospheric Plasma on the Perception of Taste and Mixability of Powdered Whey Protein Isolate
Powdered whey protein is most often used as a food supplement to enhance athletic performance, but it also has a role in health and wellness as well as the pharmaceutical sectors. Given the dynamic array of roles across several industries, understanding the functional characteristics of whey proteins is of great interest. Protein structure can be altered via plasma-surface modification (PSM), a method which is based on plasma as a means to alter a material’s surface structure and as such its functional characteristics. So far PSM has been utilized to alter the surfaces of inorganic materials but there is growing interest in its applications with organic materials such as food proteins. To date, the effect of atmospheric plasma on the perception of mixability and taste of whey protein isolate has not been explored; the purpose of this study is to investigate whether PSM could be effectively utilized to alter the two. Psychometric measures of mixability and taste were gathered during a single-blind, randomized clinical trial design during which subjects ingested 28g of either PSM treated or untreated whey protein isolate powder. A 30.26% increase in perceived mixability and 12.5% in perceived taste were observed upon treatment with PSM, indicating that plasma treatment does not negatively impact the perception of mixability and taste of whey protein isolate and under the right conditions could promote an improvement in these characteristics.