Researchers Made Bacteria-Based Fat-Free Alternative to Dairy Whipped Cream

Whipped cream is an indulgence for many consumers made from milk, but they are also filled with saturated fat and calories. There have been products that mimic whipped cream that is touted as better low-fat options made from coconut or palm oil as an alternative.

However, these alternatives failed to deliver the same taste, consistency, and texture. Jens Risbo, the lead author of a new study, said that the most difficult aspect of developing an alternative version of a food is getting the right texture. Whipped cream is made with high saturated fat, which makes it possible to whip the cream stiff which alternatives cannot achieve.

Now, Food Navigator reports that researchers from the University of Copenhagen revealed that they have uncovered a way to create fat-free whipped cream while maintaining all of its elements using only lactic acid bacteria.

Researchers Made Bacteria-Based Fat-Free Alternative to Dairy Whipped Cream Pixabay/stux

The Chemistry of Dairy-based Whipped Cream

Whipped cream is a mixture of heavy cream and sugar whipped in a mixer or by hand. It is soft, billowy, and doubled in volume with only two ingredients that can easily be made within just five minutes.

According to an article in Serious Eats, dairy-based whipped cream is a suspension of gas bubbles stabilized by its fat. Milk fat is a complex mixture of lipids, but triglyceride is the most common one.

Fatty acids are simply carboxylic acids with long carbon chains attached to an oxygen atom by a double bond and an oxygen-hydrogen grouping in a single bond. When the cream is whipped with a whisk, the air is forcibly integrated into it and forms bubbles of gas that pop quickly as they form because the surface tension of the cream is not strong enough to trap them.

After a few minutes of whipping, the fat globules in the cream start to destabilize as the phospholipid membranes are broken by the whisk, exposing portions of the triglycerides and causing them to stick together. But some fat avoids this dreaded water molecule so they align themselves with neutral pockets of air and develop a somewhat solid structure known as whipped cream.

That means the structure is held up by these exposed triglycerides and will only work if there is a large amount of them in the mixture as it is impossible to whip with less than 30% fat content. Or is it?

Fat-free Whipped Cream Made From Bacteria

Laboratory Equipment reports that to make the fat-free whipped cream, food researchers from the University of Copenhagen have turned to use two lactic acid bacteria, namely, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subs. lactis (LBD) and Lactobacillus crispatus (LBC).

Risbo said that they only used water, bacteria, a bit of milk protein, and a single thickener in making their fat-free whipped cream. Their experiment resulted in a fat-free product that peaks up and retains the liquid.

They used two different lactic acid bacteria for two versions of the bacteria-based whipped cream in which both are roughly similar in size to fat globules in dairy-based whipped cream. But the difference is in the surface properties of each bacteria that provide the cream with different structures.

Whereas one bacteria forms a weak network that produces softer foam, the other one is more similar to the fat which forms stronger networks and results in a stiffer form that can stand taller with pretty peaks.

Researchers hope that the findings of their study, titled "Lactic Acid Bacteria as Structural Building Blocks in Non-fat Whipping Cream Analogues," which is published in the journal Food Hydrocolloids will be valuable to future researchers in creating similar food structures using non-dairy sources.