Laura Piazza

University of Milan | UNIMI · Department of Food, Enviromental and Nutritional Sciences DEFENS

Introduction Dysphagia is a condition characterized by swallowing difficulties that affects an estimated 8% of the population. Management of dysphagia often requires the use of specially formulated food products that are easier to swallow, while still meeting the nutritional needs of the patient. Despite the growing market for dysphagia-oriented pr...

In the sports protein beverage market, the demand for plant‐based substitutes is rising. Sunflower press‐cake, a protein‐rich by‐product, offers a compelling alternative to traditional options like soy, pea, or rice proteins. With its natural allergen‐free composition, sunflower proteins are suitable for individuals with soy or nut allergies, broad...

When facing environmental issues associated with food waste, it is necessary to look upstream at the root causes. At the very beginning of the supply chain, there is the first cause of waste generation: unrecovered agriculture surpluses. Given the richness and diversity of farmlands, Europe is a big market for fresh fruits and vegetables, where Ita...

For improving the management of the production chain of PGI Mantua pears (which comprises many varieties, including Abate Fetel), applying the cardinal principles of circular economy and sustainability, the fruits with diseases or defects were recovered for producing dried rounds of pears from the Abate Fetel cultivar, a new product with high nutri...

Silkworm (Bombyx mori) pupae are recognized as novel nutritionally valuable food. Their use in pasta‐making was considered with the intention of repositioning spaghetti shaped pasta supplemented with silkworm derivatives (10%db) as a valuable product in sustainable diets besides upcycling a side stream from the silk industry. The principal objectiv...

BACKGROUND Oilseed‐matrix consolidation is a crucial factor when talking about oil expression because, as the cake consolidates, the coefficient of permeability inevitably decreases. Thus, any treatment that extensively ruptures cell walls reduces rigidity and hardness of the oilseed press‐cake, while improving the oil expression. Such process inte...

Data driven food‐manufacturing systems assure cost reduction, increased efficiency, improved product quality. These elements come together in a virtuous circle of digital transformation centered on sustainability. Viticulture is among the first applications of the smart‐agriculture concept. Precision viticulture has become one of the agribusiness s...

This study integrates an earthenware-based biofilter into photobioreactors (PBR), to allow Spirulina growth on organic nutrient sources. The earthenware acted as permeable membrane, enabling the bio-oxidation of soluble organics and the diffusion of mineralised ions to the photobioreactor. When fed with lactic acid fermentation effluents (organic l...

The global challenge of feeding an ever-increasing world population is leading scientists’ attention towards nutritious and sustainable foods whose production should have low impacts on environment, economy and society. In case the input feedstock can be waste nutrients, the label of such productions becomes even greener. Nutrients circularity is n...

BACKGROUND Ultrasound‐assisted extraction of the intermediate product from the mechanical expression of hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) seed oil was investigated to improve the overall expression yield without compromising oil quality. Complementary ultrasound technology was used as an out‐of‐line treatment carried out at 20 kHz frequency and optimized w...

A systemic approach was proposed to analyse a complex system such that of food value chains. Typical management methodologies were applied to a citrus derivatives industry and, based on the survey outcomes, a sustainable optimisation plan was formulated integrating the critical domains of the water-food-energy nexus. The overall process was mapped...

This study investigates the separate effect of sonication (US, carried out for 5 and 15 min) and thermal treatment (90 °C for 5min) on nutritional and technological properties of tomato paste. US treatments did not affect the colour parameters and decreased the level of total acidity. Ascorbic acid content was slightly reduced after 5min US but hal...

Ready-to-eat salads are very perishable with quality losses within 6–7 days, and the extension of their shelf life is still a challenge. In this work, an atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ) was applied for the surface decontamination of fresh-cut lettuce baby leaves. The APPJ antimicrobial efficiency on the natural microbiota and its impact on s...

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture is a novel concept in the agri-food system, which considers the implementation of techniques able to guarantee the nutritional value of the produce, the sustainability of the production and, at the same time, to reduce the ecological impact of agricultural practices. These principles can be also introduced in the fre...

The effect of ultrasound pre-treatment (for 5, 15, and 30 min) on tomato pomace methane yield was evaluated. With respect to the control (238.0 m3CH4/tVS), no improvement was recorded for the substrates pre-treated at 80 µm (0.6 W/mL). 18.9% and 5% higher methane yields were, instead, recorded from the substrate pre-treated for 15 min with an ultra...

VR experience during an event at Centrale dell'Acqua di Milano, Italy. Credit: MM The global Sustainable Development Goals are strongly communicated to citizens. Although the media are using classic or innovative communication processes no appraise was established on the effectiveness of these. Here for the first time, we assess the effectiveness o...

The development of 3D printable hydrogels based on the crosslinking between chitosan and gelatin is proposed. Chitosan and gelatin were both functionalized with methyl furan groups. Chemical modification was performed by reductive amination with methyl furfural involving the lysine residues of gelatin and the amino groups of chitosan to generate hy...

Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture (NSA) is a novel concept in agriculture that considers not only yield, but also nutritional value of produce, sustainability of production, and ecological impact of agriculture. In accordance with its goals, NSA would benefit from applying microbial-based products as they are deemed more sustainable than their synthe...

This work is aimed to present a method for analyzing and optimizing food production processes from the primary production until the final residue. The aim is to have a global view on the entire production chain in order to put in light, through a deep analysis, the strength and the weaknesses of the process and to propose solutions for its improvem...

Waste volatile compounds, such as butyric acid, generated from pit latrines may cause discomfort to pit latrine users and they have undesirable impacts on sanitation promotion efforts and public health. The purpose of this work was to isolate and identify highly efficient deodorant butyric acid bacteria and investigate their feasibility of biologic...

The omega-3 group includes substances as eicosapentaenoic acid and docosapentaenoic acid that can be partially synthesized by human body and substances as alpha-linolenic acid that have to be necessarily introduced into the body from dietary intake. Omega-3 are important nutrients thanks to their anti-inflammatory properties and healthy properties...

Zirconium and hafnium are shown to be separable using 2-octanol (C 8 H 18 O) as an extractant. Zirconium basic carbonate was dissolved using hydrochloric acids at concentrations ranging from 5 % to 20 %. Potassium fluoride was found to be crucial to the process. Its effect was investigated in the concentration range of 1 M to 3 M. The optimum condi...

Pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata Duch.) has high potential as source of carotenoids with provitamin A activity, especially all-trans-β-carotene, and are widely consumed by the Brazilian population. Consumption may be useful in preventing the vitamin A deficiency, which corresponds to a public health concern in Brazil. The cooking style can affect the ca...

A new process for oxygen enriched air (EA) production has been applied to Claus Process. This process is simple and requires few process units. Matlab and Aspen Hysys have been used for simulations and system sizing. The results demonstrate that it could be an alternative to traditional EA processes from an economical point of view.

Nanomaterial engineering technologies have the potential to revolutionize industrial food systems, addressing issues related to health and sustainability. Some nanomaterials have unique physico-chemical properties that can be exploited for beneficial effects on food, leading to increased shelf life, enhanced flavour release, and increased absorptio...

Consumer acceptability of fresh-cut apples is affected by texture characteristics, mainly by crispness attribute. The use of combined instrumental acoustic-mechanical techniques and the measurement of the absorption coefficient at 670 nm (μa670) by time-resolved reflectance spectroscopy (TRS) have been shown useful to assess fruit crispness and the...

Texture and mesostructure of packaged fresh-cut ‘Fuji’ apple slices were studied during 30 days storage at 4, 10 and 20 °C. Instrumental mechanical–acoustic texture evaluations were carried out, and cell wall materials were isolated from the flesh tissue by means of an ethanol and methanol–chloroform solvents extraction procedure. The emphasis was...

Texture is a quality attribute closely related to the structural properties of the apple cellular tissue and is claimed to be the most important aspect affecting consumer acceptability apart from taste. Instrumental and human-based assessment of apples crispness are presented in this paper. A commercially available acoustic AED detector, interfaced...

Plant and fruit cells encase themselves within a complex polysaccharide wall which are complex and highly sophisticated composite material made of cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin and which form a scaffold matrix with intertwined structure. In this work the viscoelastic properties of cell wall particles dispersions, which were extracted from fre...

The development of food processes, ingredients and formulations is a daily topic for the food industries. Model-based product, process and equipment design are getting increasing industrial attention, due to the high potential in matter of time and money saving. Bringing these advantages to the consumers' table by the application of this approach i...

Bifidobacteria represent one of the dominant groups of microorganisms colonizing the human infant intestine. Commensal bacteria that interact with a eukaryotic host are believed to express adhesive molecules on their cell surface that bind to specific host cell receptors or soluble macromolecules. Whole-genome transcription profiling of Bifidobacte...

Alginate is a natural biopolymer that forms, in the presence of divalent cations, ionic-bound gels typifying a large class of biological gels stabilized by non-covalent cross-links, and displaying a consistent restructuring kinetics. We investigate the kinetics of formation and aging of alginate gels by slow permeation of a curing CaCl 2 agent by m...

To better understand how high school students apply their information literacy skills when conducting research and how these students carry out research projects, researchers asked a group of 289 high school seniors to complete an information literacy survey related to the research process. In addition, approximately ten percent of these students w...

Change in high school student information literacy (IL) knowledge and skills, from freshman year to senior year in high school was the focus of this quasi-experimental research project. Researchers used a free information literacy skills assessment tool entitled TRAILS (Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) to measure studen...

This paper validates a simultaneous heat and mass transfer model proposed to describe the discontinuous biscuit baking process. The mathematical model includes the moving evaporation front and the development of the crust observed during the baking process. The problem is solved over a two-dimensional geometry using the finite element method. Therm...

The present paper describes preliminary results on the development of a batch lab-scale co-extrusion device for the production of alginate beads as carrier for hydrophilic compounds. A dual jet of liquid core (aqueous solution of glucose or vitamin B12 or olive oil) and liquid shell material (aqueous solution of alginates differing for guluronic to...

The impact of water on food thermodynamics and physics, and therefore on its quality, is more important than any other food chemical component. When fundamentals of chemical kinetics apply, the rates of the reactions that are responsible of food quality decay can be described as a function of food composition and of other external elements interact...

A lipophilic aroma widely used in the food field, R-(+)-limonene, was entrapped in a solid emulsion in absence of emulsifiers using agar gel as encapsulating medium. The perception of the flavour release was evaluated by means of an electronic nose. The relation between structural organization of the agar gels and flavour release and perception was...

In this work a physico-chemical characterization of the polysaccharide fraction of the exudates of Launaea acanthodes, a common medicinal species in central regions of Iran, was performed.The extraction of the polysaccharide fraction of the exudates was described. The structure characterization of the polysaccharide was performed with mono and bi-d...

The rheological behaviour of biopolymer gels is commonly investigated by means of small amplitude oscillatory measurements. This consolidated approach was used in the present paper to characterize the influence of ionic strength and temperature on the gelation of commercial low-methoxyl pectin (LMP) (DE = 22.5%). The main results showed that the so...

Surface aggregating soy protein-pectin solutions are used in the production of biodegradable films intended for food packaging applications. Structural properties of the surface biopolymer network influence the engineering properties of the films, such as permeability and mechanical strength. Soy protein isolates (SPI) – high methoxyl pectin (HMP)...

The purpose of the present work is to highlight potentiality of chemometric interpretation of consolidated instrumental food texture evaluations. In this study, back-extrusion tests were carried out on industrial-made whipped dairy creams. Mechanical profiles were obtained from 0 up to 49 storage days and were analyzed by considering the signal as...

Most of the mathematical models that have been used to describe the diffusion phenomena in gels do not take in account the elastodynamics of gel systems. A physical resistance to the macromolecule motion due to the free volume effects is supposed to take place, but a measure of this resistance is not completely defined. This work contributes to thi...

A combined acoustic–mechanical technique was employed to simultaneously characterise in uniaxial compression mode the texture properties of commercial toasted sliced breads and laboratory-made ones that were made by modifying the amount of sucrose in the recipe. Also an Image Analysis technique was used to describe the morphology of the gas cells....

The espresso coffee beverage is a polyphasic colloidal system, in which the liquid phase is topped by a wet foam of tiny sphere-shaped gas bubbles. Each sphere is surrounded by a liquid film (lamellae) that isolates it from its neighbours and that hosts biopolymers and natural surfactants. Foaming biopolymers of coffee (total fraction and its sub-f...

Crispness is a salient textural property for most fresh and dry food products. Its loss, due to the adsorption of moisture, is a major cause of rejection by consumer. Crispness is related to food structure and its mechanical properties by the capability to generate an appropriate sound during mastication and to dampen or amplify this sound. The per...

Semi-sweet hard dough biscuits were considered in the present work which aims at assessing whether biscuit failure mode and dough viscoelastic properties, which depend on the resting time after mixing, can be correlated to one another. Uniaxial compressions were performed on rested biscuit doughs to determine biaxial extensional viscosities. The ex...

Stretched ("Grissino stirato") and rolled ("Rubatà ") bread-sticks are typical Italian bakery products that are also widely produced in other EU countries. Despite their wide distribution there are no studies available on these products. Therefore, the aim of this study was to distinguish them according to their chemical composition and textural ch...

Textural parameters useful to monitor the shelf-life at 10 degrees C of industrial Ricotta have been evaluated by means of the vane test performed under controlled shear rate operating conditions and by means of lubricated squeezing flow viscosimetry. Results confirm some previous observations describing the decay of the freshness textural attribut...

Every kind of thermal analysis so far known has found applications in the study of foods and food processes. Traditional calorimetry was employed some decades ago to determine heat capacities of many food materials [1-3] and describe the behaviour of frozen ice-forming foods [4]. These pioneering studies were followed by the worldwide development o...

A phenomenological investigation was made of some physical processes that develop during an industrial baking operation of hard sweet biscuits (cookies). Samples were collected in different locations from a continuous belt oven corresponding to different baking times. The effects of time on volume, structure, weight, and color of cookies were monit...

Dough and baked products can be described as polymer systems according to the Food Polymer Science approach. The structure evolution of a bakery product can be tentatively depicted as the result of the cure of a gluten network, which mainly occurs at high baking temperatures, and that of starch amorphous matrix, which is still in progress during th...

The effects of hydrocolloids (guar and locust bean gums), soluble pentosans, and whey proteins on staling of bread crumb were investigated by means of DSC, rheometry, and image analyis. One current hypothesis, that these ingredients would behave as “water binders” and, at least the former two, as anti-staling agents, was indeed confirmed, although...

Simple recipe breads with different water contents were allowed to stale in well-defined conditions. Bread crumb was investigated using differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetry analysis (TGA), and stress-strain determinations. Calorimetric investigations extended to subambient temperature allowed an exothermic signal to be recognized jus...

Cereal Chem. 72(3):320-325 The change of the moisture profile within a bread loaf and bread texture ena involved in the process. To evaluate bread staling, the stress-strain during storage up to 300 hr at 250 C were investigated. Three different behavior of bread during aging was investigated. By considering the types of bread were considered: 1) b...

Isothermal calorimetry allows rice cooking to be simulated directly at various temperatures in excess water. The signal can be interpreted as the sum of the thermal effect of the starch gelatinization, which obeys first-order kinetics, and of a further process that can be tentatively related to water diffusion. This effect is greatly reduced in gro...

It is well known that during the cooking process the physical and the chemical characteristics of pasta change in a sensible manner. Usually the weight, the volume, the consistence, the color and the porosity of pasta are assessed on the uncooked product and on the cooked product at the optimum cooking time, i.e. the time required for the white cor...

Friability is a salient textural characteristic for most fresh biscuits. Its loss during storage because of moisture absorption is a major cause of rejection by consumers of these baked products (1). It may therefore result of great interest to identify a water content limit at which the textural quality of biscuits becomes organoleptically unaccep...

Nutting's general law of deformation was used to characterize the nonlinear rheological behaviour of bread. A simple experimental technique submits a sample of regular geometry to a sequence of compression runs in which the ultimate strain, or the ultimate load, was kept constant. In order to avoid sample failure as a consequence of mechanical fati...

This paper illustrates the application of the Nutting general low of deformation in combination with a simple experimental technique to characterize the rheological changes which accompain the steeling process of bread. Basically it consists in submitting a sample having regular geometry to a series of uniaxial compression tests during which a maxi...

Effects of UF on clotting kinetics, curd hardening, and whey syneresis of raw and pasteurized milk were studied. Milk was subjected to thermal and mechanical stresses similar to those occurring in a UF plant. To isolate the effects of milk recirculation from those due to protein concentration, a UF batch loop system similar to an industrial system...