Publications

Egg yolk granule is a promising ingredient in the food industry. Recent studies have shown that ultra-high pressure homogenization (UHPH) improved the techno-functional properties of the granule, but they did not evaluate its impact on digestibility. Consequently, this work aimed to evaluate the impact of UHPH-treatment (300 MPa and 4 passes) on granule digestibility by using a static in vitro digestion method. While UHPH destabilized the high molecular weight granule lipoproteins, the treatment did not affect the in vitro digestibility of egg yolk granule since similar protein/peptide profiles were obtained from gel electrophoresis and RP-HPLC analysis. Moreover, the degree of hydrolysis was similar between control and UHPH-treated granules with values ranging from 11.5 to 25.2% for the gastric and intestinal phases, respectively. Finally, apovitellin 3-4, apovitellenin IV and phosvitin were specifically digested during the gastric and intestinal phases. Consequently, modifications induced by UHPH on egg yolk granule were not correlated with in vitro digestion experiments. Nevertheless, this work represents an interesting added-value to support the development of innovative egg yolk granule-based ingredients for the food industry.