Swedish scientists have successfully created a wheat-based gel made entirely from wheat bran fibre and wheat gluten protein in a move that will see one of the industry’s least valued by-products transformed into a sustainable ingredient.

According to FoodProcessing.com.au millions of tonnes of wheat bran are left over when flour is milled, which then often ends up as feed for chickens or other livestock. However, the researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology have shown this bran could instead be turned into soft, jelly-like hydrogels which can then be used to give structure, thickness and texture to many foods.

Francisco Vilaplana, a professor in glycoscience at KTH and director of the PLENTY research centre at KTH, said these gels could then be used to thicken, stabilise or add texture to foods like plant-based meat and dairy alternatives, as well as high fibre snacks, sauces or sports and medical nutrition products.

“We developed new functional food ingredients that combine two of the most nutritious components in our diets, the protein and the fibre,”Professor Vilaplana said.

To achieve this, the research team extracted arabinoxylan (AX), which is a natural fibre found in wheat bran, and mixed it with proteins from wheat. Then, to make the gel, the researchers used an enzyme called laccase, which links the fibre molecules together. The end result is a stable gel and, when the protein is added, it simply gets trapped inside the fibre network.

Prof Vilaplana said this method improves how the protein behaves, because it cannot form a gel as easily as the fibre molecules can. This in turn can create a problem for food texture.

The research was conducted by postdoctoral researcher Niklas Wahlström under a fund project by Lantmännen Research Foundation. The full research was published in Food Hydrocolloids.