Joe Consumer pulls the half-eaten pail of ice cream from the freezer,
anticipating its cold, creamy goodness. Instead, he lifts the lid to
find a coarse, hardened mass. It is a disappointment for him and an
international marketing problem for the dairy industry.
The solution? Add winter wheat.
Not the grain itself, but a protein extract from the plant.
Doug Goff told an American Association for the Advancement of Science
meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, in mid-February that he has found a
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way to prevent formation of large ice crystals that cause ice cream to
lose its condition.
It may seem a trivial issue for such an esteemed group to consider, but
the International Dairy Foods Association says ice cream and frozen
desserts are a $55 billion US industry.
Goff, a researcher from the University of Guelph, said in an interview
that the same protein that prevents winter wheat cells from exploding
in cold weather can also improve the shelf life, transportation and
potentially the marketing of ice cream.
“Ice cream is made up of lots of tiny frozen crystals and air bubbles,”
he said. “The smaller the crystals, the creamier the ice cream.”
Creating the tiny ice crystals from fat, water and sugar is not the
problem, he said. The difficulty lies in keeping them small during
transportation or in the consumer’s freezer.
This can be accomplished by adding an extract made from the winter
wheat’s anti-freeze protein, or AFP.
Crystal stabilizers, like the winter wheat protein, are absorbed into
the surface of the ice crystal and prevent it from expanding.
“The dairy products industry has consolidated production, like most of
the food industry worldwide,” Goff said.
“That means we ship ice cream further and further to market ….
Innovations like this might even open up markets in hotter climates.”
Heat shock and delays in delivery can prematurely start the formation
of large crystals in ice cream. This potentially limits markets when it
is produced in large, centralized facilities.
Goff obtained the AFP technology and the extract under academic licence
from Ice Biotech, an Ontario company formed by university professors
and researchers from several Canadian schools. It holds the AFP patents
and patent-pending applications in Canada, the United States and other
countries.
“We find similar (antifreeze) proteins in insects and fish,” said Ice
Biotech spokesperson Oscar Cheng.
“But extracts from plants are more acceptable to the public to have in
their food. With food labelling, having a (worm) on the ingredients
list might not go over as well as an edible plant. We have looked at a
lot of different (fall and winter) crops. But wheat is the most
marketable. It’s seen as green, healthy, trendy and people already eat
it every day.”
Cheng said while ice cream was a good place to start, he sees potential
for a broad variety of AFP applications, including cold preservation of
livestock embryos.
“Other frozen foods … cryo-preservation in genetic applications. Ice
crystal growth in cells is one of the biggest enemies of the freezing
process.”
Goff said his research is not complete, but he expects the
commercialization of his ice cream innovations will end up on grocery
store freezer shelves in the next few years.
Cheng wouldn’t describe the process for extracting the protein from
wheat, but both he and Goff said research into cold-hardiness genes
might serve to improve the study of winter-friendly plants in general.
“This could be good for the dairy farmers and the winter cereal
producers in the long run,” Goff said.
