Practical implications of the phase-compositional assessment of lipid-based food products by time-domain NMR

The objective of this work is to determine the solid fat content (SFC) of the fat-oil phase in oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions, i.e., the droplet SFC, using transverse relaxation decay deconvolution (TRDD) analysis. The TRDD NMR experiment classifies protein protons as mobile, semimobile, and nonmobile. Hence, protein contributes more or less to the solid content detected by TRDD as a function of pH, protein content, and protein denaturation. By taking into account the protein contribution to the overall solid content, one can estimate the droplet solid content in O/W emulsions. The SFC can then be deduced if one converts the ingredients' mass fraction into ingredients' proton fraction using the ingredients' proton densities.