Research Progress on the Modification of Food Protein by Pulsed Electric Field

As a promising non-thermal processing technology, pulse electric field (PEF) technology has the potential to be used in food processing and preservation. Compared with conventional thermal processing, it could maintain the food's quality attributes, such as sensory and nutritional properties, which were usually destroyed during conventional thermal processing. PEF has been considered as a potential technology to replace the thermal technology or combine with it in food industry, which has attracted extensive attention from domestic and foreign researchers in recent years. The PEF has been proposed to modify the molecular structure of food proteins and improve their functional characteristics. The secondary bonds that maintain the high-level structure of protein was destroyed after the protein was treated by PEF, which resulted in hydrophobic group was exposed and changed the surface hydrophobicity of the protein molecule, moreover the unfolded protein molecule increased the molecular flexibility and solubility, finally the functional properties of protein were improved. All these were reviewed in the present article to provide some insight on the application of PEF in food industry for reference.