Advances on physical treatments for soy allergens reduction - A review

Inglés. peer reviewed

Inglés. Background: Food allergies represent one of the most rapidly increasing and significant human challenges connected with global health. Soybean has high protein and fat quality; however, it is responsible for allergenicity in humans. Despite this, the requirement for protein will increase by 110% in 2050. Traditional methods such as heat treatments (boiling, roasting) are usually exploited to decrease food allergenicity, but they produce modifications in food quality (color, smell, flavor, and texture) due to high temperatures. Scope and approach: Consequently, new potential approaches for reducing soybean allergenicity are described in this review, divided into two categories. The first is related to pressure techniques, such as extrusion, high hydrostatic pressure (HHP), high-pressure homogenization (HPH), and controlled instantaneous pressure drop (DIC). The second is related to waves: gamma irradiation (γ-irradiation), pulsed ultraviolet light (PUV), cold plasma, microwave, and ultrasonication. These techniques have the same common goal: lowering soybean allergenicity of the products with an impact on protein structure. Key findings and conclusions: The review found that physical treatments have better profiles on the food nutritional characteristics and sensory properties, maintaining the color, flavor, and freshness, as compared to the conventional methods (proteolysis, thermal, fermentation). The allergenicity may increase, decrease or persist unchanged depending on treatment intensity and protein structure. However, allergenicity can be minimized if optimal parameters (energy, time, temperature, and frequency) are applied during these processes.