Designing gel coatings for oral soft perception of fiber particles

Promoting the consumption of dietary fibers (DF) is important for public health but also for sustainability reasons. However, the key barrier toward DF consumption is their negative mouthfeel typically associated with grittiness, particle detection, mouth dryness caused by particle-oral surface contact. Hereby, we developed a novel approach based on creating a gel layer around pea fiber particles to decrease negative mouthfeel caused by the presence of the pea fibers. The current process and formulation used allowed to entrap up to ∼2 % w/w pea fibers with an encapsulation efficiency ∼95%. Sensory analysis demonstrated that the gel coating approach is an effective strategy to significantly decrease up to 52 %, 42 %, and 36 % the amount of perceived particles, grittiness, and mouth dryness, respectively. Furthermore, the gel coatings showed a decrease in coating efficiency of ∼15% after being exposed to shear stress. More stress resistant gel coatings can be manufactured increasing the gel coating strength. Finally, this study proposes a new effective strategy to improve the palatability of DF to design healthier and more sustainable products.