Optimizing the quality and stability of potato chips and fried snack foods

These products contain a high proportion of fat and moreover, they have been subjected to frying processes, which accelerates the oxidation of the oil used to fry them, which in turn is absorbed in the product. Thus, not only lipid oxidation needs to be controlled in these products, but also their stability and shelf life. Threfore, it is important to study how oxidation takes place in front various types of frying oil, different types of frying system, as well as the strategies to stabilize the products that are packaged for commercialization.

 Related projects:

“Process optimization to improve the quality and stability of fried snack products. Control methods”.

Programa Nacional de Alimentación. Secretaría de Estado de Educación, Universidades, Investigación y Desarrollo. CAL00-055-C2-2.

This project involved six national companies and the Spanish Association of Chips and Snack Food Manufacturers (AEPA). The first trial of this study was to evaluate and select a number of analytical methods suitable for the quality control of the industrial continuous frying process, that were complementary or alternative to the acidity index.

The second trial of this study was to optimize the working conditions for improving the quality and stability of fried products. To achieve this second goal, the following specific objectives were raised:

[1] To select the best combination of antioxidants, that added to the frying medium , lead to a higher quality of frying oil used, and the fried product.

[2] To evaluate the effect of different conditions of the frying process on the quality of the frying medium and the fried products. The studied conditions included the type of oil, to use or not the combination of selected antioxidants, and packing the fried product in nitrogen atmosphere.

[3] To study the correlation between the degree of alteration of the frying oil and shelf life of the fried product, in order to predict the shelf life of the product from the results obtained for the frying oil or the brand-new fried products.

Project Leader:

Francesc Guardiola, PhD