Slowing the Starch Digestion by Structural Modification through Preparing Zein/Pectin Particle Stabilized Water-in-Water Emulsion

Slowing the digestion of starch is one of the dominant concerns in the food industry. A colloidal structural modification strategy for solving this problem was proposed in this work. Due to thermodynamic incompatibility between two biopolymers, water/water emulsion of waxy corn starch (WCS) droplets dispersed in a continuous aqueous guar gum (GG) was prepared, and zein particles (ZPs), obtained by antisolvent precipitation and pectin modification, were used as stabilizer. As the ratio of zein to pectin in the particles was 1:1, their wetting properties in the two polysaccharides were similar, which made them accumulate at the interface and cover the WCS-rich droplets. The analysis of digestibility curves indicated that a rapid (rate constant k₁: 0.145 min^-1) and a slow phase ( k₂: 0.022 min^-1) existed during WCS digestion. However, only one slow phase ( k₂: 0.019 min^-1) was found in the WCS/GG emulsion, suggesting that this structure was effective in slowing starch digestion.