Interpretation of the color due to the ubiquitous nonenzymatic browning phenomena in foods

PEPA, LORENA S.; RODRÍGUEZ, SILVIO D.; SANTOS FERREIRA, CRISTINA; BUERA, MARÍA DEL PILAR

COLOR RESEARCH AND APPLICATION

JOHN WILEY & SONS INC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2020

0361-2317

Many foods are subject to browning by heat treatment or long storage times.Either if it is a sign of quality decrease or a desirable feature, it is necessary tocharacterize fully the color of what is perceived as ?brown.? In this paper, wedefine three stages of browning in foods, ranging from yellow, reddish-brownto dark brown, showing that the commonly employed indexes are not sufficientto describe the later stages of browning, corresponding to the darkercolors. Frequently absorbance at a single wavelength, two-dimensional(2D) diagrams, browning index depending on one chromatic coordinate or justL* are employed to describe color in the browning processes in food systems.While these tools are adequate enough to define the evolution of the reaction,they fail to properly characterize the brown color quality: they evaluate eitherlightness (1D) or the chromatic aspects (2D). In this work, we fully characterizedbrowning in 3D color spaces. The limits for the appropriate use of the differentindexes were also defined, according to the browning stage.