Classification and Industry Development of Food Thickener Gums

　　Classification of food additive products, food thickener generally refers to food gum. Food thickener gums are divided into five categories.
　

　　Plant gum prepared from plant exudates, seeds, peels and stems. Such as guar gum, locust bean gum, tamarind gum, tara gum, Artemisia gum, linseed gum, fenugreek gum, Gleditsia bean gum, Arabic gum, tragacanth gum, Indian gum, karaya gum, peach gum, pectin and konjac gum.

　　Animal glue, such as gelatin, casein, sodium caseinate, chitin, chitosan, Whey Protein Isolation, whey protein concentrate, and fish glue.

　　Biogums, such as xanthan gum, gellan gum, pullulan, welland gum, yeast polysaccharide, curdlan gum and pullulan.

　　Alginate, such as agar, carrageenan, alginic acid (salt), propylene glycol alginate, fucoidan, fucoidan.

　　Chemically modified adhesives, such as sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, hydroxyethyl cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, methyl cellulose, hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose, hydroxypropyl cellulose and modified starch.

　　Because of many varieties, different producing areas, different viscosity coefficients and different production processes, the specific application results of thickeners will also be obviously different. To provide different users with products with targeted models and technological requirements, technical cooperation between thickener manufacturers and food manufacturers is the inevitable development trend of professional division of labor in t he food industry at present. Another development trend of thickener is that it not only plays the role of stabilizing and thickening the system, but also develops into one of the components of functional food, paying more attention to the functions of polysaccharide compounds.

　　In recent two years, thickeners have been widely used in food industry, and the corresponding products, such as jelly, suspended drinks, fruit juice, fermented milk, liquid milk, soft candy, ice cream, meat products, rice flour products, bionic food and so on. The viscosity of thickener solution has a great influence on its application effect, and there are many factors that affect the viscosity of thickener, besides its structure and relative molecular weight, it also depends on the temperature, pH value, metal ion concentration and shear force of the system. With the increase of thickener concentration, the molecular volume of thickener increases, the probability of interaction increases, and the adsorption of water molecules increases, so the viscosity increases. The pH value of solution has an important influence on the viscosity and stability of thickener, so attention must be paid to the selection and use of thickener. The viscosity of thickener usually changes with the change of pH value. In addition, with the increase of temperature, the movement speed of molecules increases and the viscosity of general solutions decreases. The dispersion and dissolution of thickener particles also affect its application characteristics, and the chemical structure of hydrophilic colloid molecules directly affects its solubility.

　　The production and processing of food thickener in China have developed rapidly: with the rapid increase of xanthan gum output, microbial polysaccharides have successively broken through the technical barriers of foreign countries, and the research and production of gellan gum has greatly increased the output of domestic gellan gum at present, and it has won the favor of domestic and Asian food enterprises with its excellent cost performance, and its application fields are expanding day by day. In recent years, curdlan gum and pullulan have come out continuously, and the production capacity has changed from small to large, and the variety of products has increased day by day. China, as a big producer of food additives, has been targeted by international food ingredients giants with the continuous introduction of high-tech products. In recent two or three years, many domestic manufacturers have been acquired and reorganized by foreign companies, and the development prospects of xanthan gum, gellan gum and pectin are worrying.

　　At present, there are three main problems facing the industry:

　　First, in the process of strengthening the supervision of food safety, there are still some problems such as imperfect laws and regulations and unscientific law enforcement, which limit the technological innovation of enterprises and bring some adverse effects to their production and operation;

　　Second, various costs have risen, which has compressed the profit space of enterprises and reduced their profitability;

　　Third, some products blindly expand production capacity, and the market competition is more intense. The vicious competition of low prices disrupts the market order and affects the healthy development of the industry.