What is Gum arabic ?
Arabic Gum, also known as Food Additives acacia gum, chaar gund, or meska, is a natural gum made of hardened sap taken from two species of the acacia tree; Acacia senegal and Acacia seyal. The gum is harvested commercially from wild trees throughout the Sahel from Senegal and Sudan to Somalia, although it has been historically cultivated in Arabia and West Asia. Thickening Agent Gum arabic, a complex mixture of polysaccharides and glycoproteins, is used primarily in the food industry as a stabilizer. It is edible and has E number E414.
Gum arabic is a key ingredient in traditional lithography and is used in printing, paint production, glue, cosmetics and various industrial applications, including viscosity control in inks and in textile industries, although less expensive materials compete with it for many of these roles. While gum arabic is now produced mostly throughout the African Sahel, it is still harvested and used in the Middle East. For example, Arab populations use the natural gum to make a chilled, sweetened, and flavored gelato-like dessert.
Function & Application
- Acacia gum has good emulsifying properties, especially suitable for oil-in-water emulsion system, widely used as emulsion stabilizer in emulsion essence;
- It also has good film-forming properties; as a microcapsule film-forming agent for converting essential oils or other liquid raw materials into powder form, it can prolong flavor quality and prevent oxidation, and is also used as a flavor carrier for baked products.
- gum arabic can hinder the formation of sugar crystals, used as anti-crystallization agent in candy, prevent crystal precipitation, can also effectively emulsified milk fat in milk sugar to avoid spillage;
- gum arabic is also used to glaze on the surface of chocolate, so that chocolate is only soluble in the mouth, insoluble in hands;
- Acacia gum is used in emulsified beverages such as cola to emulsify and disperse essential oils and oil-soluble pigments to avoid the pigmentation of bottlenecks where essential oils and pigments float during storage;
- Acacia gum is also used as a haze agent for beverages with vegetable oils and resins to increase the diversity of the appearance of the beverage.
