Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Biochemistry KU Leuven

🌟 Cheers to Charity! 🍻 The Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Biochemistry (LFCB) is proud to announce that we raised over €1700 for De Warmste Week by selling 3 Christmas themed beers: Santas Secret Stash, Rudolphs Rose, and Twinkling Tripel. A huge thank you to everyone who helped organize this initiative and those of you who bought our beer. Here's to a season of giving and raising a glass for good causes! #WarmsteWeek #BeerForACause #LFCB #ScienceForCommunity #BrewingGood #beer

🤩 Woow 5000 followers 🤩 👋 We are very proud we have reached this milestone! And while "we" is of course the whole lab, it is especially the #SciCom team of #LFCB. Therefore we would like to take this opportunity to show you our #ScienceCommunication highlights of 2024! 🥼 This year our colleagues held a workshop for the Kinderuniversiteit and Day of Science. At #Kinderuniveristeit of KU Leuven we explained the power of bubbles and foams - creating the perfect airy chocomouse. We opened our lab to the public on Dag van de Wetenschap, showing our different research lines and letting them experiment with us. 🧐 Additionally, we followed interesting SciCom workshops at Let's talk Science, bundled our new knowledge and gave our very own SciCom sessions for our colleagues. 🙏 Last but not least we want to thank our colleagues for making interesting and clear graphical abstracts for their published works. We hope you all enjoyed them. We are very excited for a new year full of conducting and communicating about our science 😉

Need to fill your reading list this holiday season? 🧐 Check out our #newpublication   Viena Monterde, Frederik Janssen, Ewoud Spaas, Manolis Chatzigiannakis, and Arno Wouters delved into the fascinating world of wheat extract-based #foams and their stabilization mechanisms. They explored how water-extractable proteins of wheat flour influence key properties like air/water interfacial stability and thin liquid film dynamics.   ✨ Why does this matter? This is the group’s first publication using their new thin film balance, constructed with the help of Frederik Janssen, Manolis Chatzigiannakis, and Jan Vermant (ETH Zürich). Investigating thin film drainage dynamics is a highly relevant yet ill-investigated concept for food foams. With this setup, for the first time, they found that arabinoxylan plays a direct role in stabilizing the interfaces and thin liquid films of a wheat constituent based foam. This knowledge could have implications for improving foam-type, cereal-based foods—think better bread doughs, beer foams, and more!   Curious to learn more? Feel free to reach out or check out the publication for free until January 31, 2025 https://lnkd.in/ePHrqxcW   🙏🏽 Special thanks to Research Foundation Flanders - FWO for the financial support!   #Interfaces #FoamStabilization #CerealScience #Arabinoxylan

🎓 We are proud to present Dr. Isabella Riley! This evening she succesfully defended her PhD entitled: Food biopolymers transitions and water dynamics during deep-frying and their relation to microstructure formation We would like to thank her co-promotors Jan Delcour and Bart Nicolai, and all the jury members #PhDone #deepfrying #waterdynamics #microstructre

🚀 Publication alert! Excited to share our latest publication: "Acidic hydrothermal processing of wheat using citrate buffer largely enhances iron and zinc bioaccessibility and bioavailability to Caco-2 cells" by Marie Huyskens, Elien Lemmens, Charlotte Grootaert, John Van Camp, kristin verbeke, Peter Goos, Erik Smolders, and Jan Delcour. 🌾The Challenge: Phytate in wheat binds essential minerals like iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn), limiting their bioavailability. 🧪 Our Solution: Hydrothermal processing (45–60°C, pH 4.0–6.0, 8–24 h) of wheat using various incubation media can reduce phytate levels and increase the bio-accessibility and bioavailability of Fe and Zn to Caco-2 cells. 📈 The Results: Phytate reduction: Contour plots show the impact of varying incubation temperatures, pH levels, and media on the residual phytate content. Bioaccessibility: Fe and Zn bioaccessibility of hydrothermally processed wheat using citrate buffer increased 9.8 and 8.8 times, respectively, compared to unprocessed wheat. Bioavailability (to Caco-2 cells): Fe bioavailability rose 6-fold, while Zn bioavailability improved 12-fold, compared to unprocessed wheat. 🏆 Why It Matters: These findings open doors for whole grain-based products that can help address mineral deficiencies by enhancing Fe and Zn uptake. 🙌 A special thanks to my amazing co-authors for their dedication to this work! 📖 Read the full paper here https://lnkd.in/e8zU_Cnf #FoodScience #WholeGrains #Phytate #Iron #Zinc #Bioavailability

🌾✨ New Publication Alert! ✨🍺 We’re excited to share our latest review: "Reassessing the importance of barley starch and amylolytic enzyme properties in malting and brewing" by Charlotte De Schepper and Christophe Courtin. 🌍🍻 As climate change reshapes barley growth and starch properties, brewers face new challenges in ensuring process efficiency, resource sustainability, and beer quality. This review explores the evolving journey of barley starch from grain to glass, diving into:  - Starch granule proportions and structures 📊  -The fine balance of starch gelatinization and hydrolysis during mashing⚖️  - Research gaps and exciting future directions 🔎 🍺 Whether you're a brewing scientist, beer enthusiast, or industry innovator, we hope this inspires new ideas and discussions!💡 📄 Read the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/dheXDmTP #BarleyResearch #StarchProperties #BeerInnovation

🎓 We proudly present Dr. Celine Verdonck Today she succesfully defended her PhD entitled: Understanding #sourdough functionality in wholemeal wheat #breadmaking 🍞 We would like to thank the promotor Christophe Courtin, the entire jury and the contributors to the #SourFun project. #PhDone

🎁 Happy Saint Nicholas day! ✨ 🍪🍫 Today, Saint Nicholas passed by our laboratory to treat all the hard working master thesis students, PhD students, lab technicians, postdoctoral researchers and professors! #SaintNicholas #LFCB #Chocolate #Speculaas #KULeuven KU Leuven

🚨 Publication alert! Our latest publication titled “Directing oat groat heat treatment conditions towards increased protein extractability” by Ines Pynket, Frederik Janssen, Jarne Van Gils, Christophe Courtin and Arno Wouters is now available in Current Research in Food Science. 📖 Read the article here in gold open access: https://lnkd.in/e7xJwV3U 💡 We found that: • Industrial heat treatment of oats results in reduced protein extractability. • Oat groat heat treatment conditions can be directed to retain high protein extractability. • Inactivation of oat lipases requires less severe heat treatment than that of oat peroxidases. • Clumping of the oat aleurone intracellular material occurred upon heat treating oats. Our findings have important implications for oat processing companies, which could apply the achieved insights to re-evaluate the industrial heat treatment of oat groats. 🙏 Special thanks to Research Foundation Flanders - FWO for financial support! #Oats #Protein #Kilning #LFCB #FWO #KULeuven KU Leuven

🍞 New publication alert!   💡 In out latest paper, published in Food Research International, Wisse Hermans, Yamina De Bondt, Niels Langenaeken, Pia Silventoinen, Emilia Nordlund, and Christophe Courtin found: (1) that gluten in the sub-aleurone of wheat is comparable to gluten in white wheat flour in terms of bread-making functionality (2) that the high content of functional gluten in the sub-aleurone enables the production of gluten-enriched ingredients from miller’s bran that are functional for bread-making.   💪 This work was a collaboration between the Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Biochemistry KU Leuven and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.   📖 Interested in learning more? Access the article: https://lnkd.in/g6j-iEXM   🙏🏽Thanks to Research Foundation Flanders - FWO for the support!   For more information, contact Wisse Hermans at [email protected]   #KULeuven #newpublication #gluten #protein #wheat #bran #bread #FWO #FoodScience