VESTA Connect Talent

The agri-food sector is facing a major socio-economic transition, with growing demand for healthier and more natural products. It is also essential to produce our food in a more sustainable way in order to preserve environmental systems.

These challenges call for a major rethink of the traditional strategies involved in food production, in particular by promoting the use of ingredients of plant origin that are minimally processed. To ensure the success of such a transition, it is vital that the physico-chemical stability of food - which determines its sensory quality and shelf life - remains assured.

The unique and highly innovative VESTA project is based on an integrated, multi-scale approach aimed at controlling the microstructure of food emulsions in order to improve the functionalities of the targeted components.

It focuses on oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions, i.e. lipid droplets dispersed in a continuous aqueous phase, which are commonly accepted systems as food models. Such structures are found in many everyday foods, such as dairy products, infant formulas, condiments, soups and drinks.

The objectives of the project are to:

i) explore the use of biosourced particles to encapsulate natural antioxidants and thus form a protective barrier on the surface of lipid droplets lipid droplets,
ii) to understand and control the interfacial and emulsifying properties of protein ingredients of plant origin obtained by moderate fractionation and,
iii) to systematically assess the fate of these new emulsions under digestive conditions, which will be an essential criterion for the transfer of the knowledge generated to industrial applications.

• Project start and end dates: 2021-2026
• Funding: Connect Talent Pays de la Loire and Nantes Métropole
• Total budget: €1m / total grants €517k
• Project leader: Claire Berton-Carabin (Equipe ISD)