Honey powder produced by spray drying as an ingredient: A new perspective using a plant-based protein as a carrier

Abstract

Honey is an excellent alternative to be used in different applications by the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics industries. However, the use of honey in its liquid form can present several disadvantages due to its high viscosity and density. In addition, honey can naturally crystallize during storage time, limiting its application in new products by industries. Thus, an alternative to using liquid honey in industry is the powder form. The objective of this study was to obtain honey powder by spray drying using a plant-based protein as a carrier. The honey used as raw material showed acceptable physicochemical parameters by the legislation of honey quality control, such as pH of (4.0 ± 0.1), the water content of (20.70 ± 0.3) g/100 g, ash of (0.48 ± 0.02) g/100 g, the fructose content of (35.42 ± 0.14) g/100 g, (43.05 ± 0.46) g/100 g for glucose, (0.56 ± 0.02) g/100 g for sucrose, and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) value of (37.47 ± 1.04) mg/kg of honey, leading to the production of the honey powder. The mixture of fresh honey and plant-based protein was made with dispersions of 15, 16 and 18 g/100 g of honey using isolated rice protein as a carrier (total solid at 30 g/100 g d.b.). Finally, the honey powder produced was physicochemically characterized. The dispersion with 16 g/100 g of honey achieved an intermediary sugar/honey recovery of 35.93 ± 0.82% and 68.54 ± 2.16% of total protein recovery, and the spray drying yield was satisfactory > 50%. The overall results suggested that this dispersion is the ideal formulation when commercialization of the honey powder as an ingredient is intended.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• fructose
• glucose
• HMF
• rice protein
• drying

Acknowledgments

Taíse Toniazzo thanks Prof. Ernani Pinto from the University of São Paulo for the use of the laboratory-scale spray dryer (Büchi, B290, Switzerland) and the GramKow company for the donation of the rice protein isolate.

Disclosure statement

None declared.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to FAPESP (The São Paulo Research Foundation) for supporting this study [grant numbers 2013/07914-8, 2017/19266-1, and 2019/26525-9], and to the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) under grant 309548/2021-7. The funding sources had no involvement in the study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, or in the decision to submit this article for publication.