Consumers have come to recognize the nutritional advantages of soybeans as a good source of plant-based protein and oil. However, like many other conventional food processing sectors, the soybean processing business faces issues like excessive resource use, harmful emissions, and low returns on investment. Using cutting-edge food processing techniques to increase soybeans’ nutritional value and added value in light of their impressive nutritional advantages has been the industry’s top priority.
Suppose soybean oil, the most widely available processed soybean product, is the main chain. In that case, numerous refined products, such as dietary fibre (1), isoflavones (2), soy peptides (3), etc., have the potential for high-value processing and potential functionality in addition to traditional soy goods. To get the most out of soybeans, it is crucial to properly assess their nutritional value as a component in foods, transforming them from mundane to useful.
1. Development prospects In Soy Protein Processing For Superior Quality
Using cutting-edge processing methods, we can create both high-quality oil and physiologically active sustainable farming at the same time.
2. The STS Soya Technology System
This process, carried out in state-of-the-art food processing facilities by Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), guarantees the produced soymilk’s safety, nutritional value, and quality. Safe for human consumption from an organoleptic standpoint.
Soybean varieties are chosen, and the seeds are stored in a moisture- and temperature-controlled system as the first steps in the contemporary manufacturing of soymilk. To prevent fatty acid oxidation caused by the lipoxidase enzymes, the seeds are cleansed, and damaged seeds are removed. At this stage, dehulling is performed to create a white and delicious soymilk.
The remaining seeds are blanched to deactivate naturally occurring enzymes (lipoxidases), then ground in a hot water solution of sodium bicarbonate to further reduce unwanted enzyme activity by developing a thick slurry and improving soy protein extractability. Using a decanter centrifuge, the soybean residue is extracted.
Milk is deodorized by heating it under a vacuum to remove odour-causing bacteria. It is then standardized to achieve the proper protein content, flavoured, fortified, and homogenized to create a consistent final product. Ultra-high temperature (UHT) processing and aseptic packaging are used on the resulting milk product.
3. Pressing And Organic Solvent Extraction
These are the cornerstones of the conventional approach for isolating soybean oil and protein. This results in two issues: the protein’s loss of function and organic solvents in the remaining oil after extraction. Numerous research has shown that the best way to deal with this issue is to prepare soy protein and oil simultaneously using an enzyme-assisted aqueous extraction process.
In addition, this approach yields proteins with high physiological functioning. The high price of the enzymes used and the instability of the circumstances during scale-up production are mostly to blame for the inability of the enzyme-assisted aqueous extraction method to replace the traditional process for the generation of soybean oil. To speed up the process of industrialization, more study of this approach is still required.
4. Soybean Dregs (Okara) And Soybean Whey Are Two Examples Of Soybean Byproducts That Can Be Processed Extensively And Put To Valuable Use
Although soybean whey and okara are typically discarded, they are not waste and are useful byproducts of conventional soybean products. Okara is a strong source of dietary fibre and oligopeptides, whereas soybean whey is high in proteins, simple sugars, oligosaccharides, minerals, and soy isoflavones.
Important physiological effects, such as immunological control, altered hormone metabolism, decreased body fat and sugar, protection against colon illness, etc., have been attributed to the substances above. Companies that use the substances mentioned above as raw materials for functional foods already exist but have a negligible percentage of the market.
However, general processing businesses need help to afford the significant costs associated with the deep processing of byproducts. For instance, membrane separation technology is often regarded as the gold standard when it comes to separating the functional components of soybean whey. Still, it is rarely used on a commercial scale. On the other hand, more study is required to describe the components of the byproduct fully. For instance, we can learn about the many components of dietary fibre and how the remaining acidic protein can be isolated and used.
5. Extraction by Membrane Ultrafiltration
The ultrafiltration membrane purification method offers a promising alternative to conventional isoelectric precipitation (NICHOLS D J, 1981). Soy protein isolation using membrane ultrafiltration methods was pioneered in the early to mid-1970s (Lawhon, 1978a). While Olsen (S., 1978) concentrated defatted soybean extract from 5.6% to 25% of total solids via direct ultrafiltration to create a soybean product with a protein content of 88% (dry basis), Lawhon et al. (Lawhon, 1978b) used a discontinuous percolation or re-ultrafiltration process to achieve this.
Proteins can be isolated from salt and sugar using ultrafiltration but can also be isolated from one another (M., 1992). Proteins of varying molecular weights are generated through SPI hydrolysis (Zhang Y., 1996) and are separated using ultrafiltration membranes of varying pore diameters. When applied to soy, membrane ultrafiltration can selectively separate and eliminate unwanted components, such as soy oligosaccharides (Endres, 2001), based on the molecular size difference between proteins and other components. Also, the soy protein is extracted without making a whey-like byproduct.
Bottom Line
The protein found in soybeans is quite popular. However, research into improved ways for its extraction is ongoing. This is due to the growing number of interesting uses for soy proteins made possible by advances in extraction technology and the issue of providing modern food production with protein sources with tailored functional characteristics. The study of new methods of soy protein extraction is essential.
The extraction methods discussed in this article have largely evolved as replacements for older methods, and their primary benefits include reduced environmental impact, simplified implementation, and the generation of functionally distinct forms of soy protein. Although these methods have been studied extensively for soy protein extraction, they still have significant limitations that prevent them from being widely used.
