Sam Saguy, D.Sc.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

TOPICS:
1. Innovative partnerships - a vehicle for open innovation successes
2. New product development and consumer research
3. Infant formula
4. Food rehydration

SELECTED RESEARCH DESCRIPTION:

Innovative partnerships - a vehicle for open innovation successes

Collaboration has been a key factor in driving economic growth in the new millennium. Innovation in information technology, institutions, and strategic reorientation of technological change has opened opportunity, and competition has put strong imperatives in play for collaborative innovation. In the context of open innovation many companies have recently started to actively collaborate and seek know-how externally. While some pioneering firms realized the enormous benefits, many others experience major difficulties in managing external technology exploitation. To overcome these challenges, the food industry needs o establish appropriate strategic technology-planning processes, including the extension of product-technology to integrated roadmaps for open innovation processes, including external technology exploitation. The transition to open innovation is not an easy task, especially for medium to small size companies as typically are in Israel. In order to be competitive in the marketplace, the food industry needs to adopt strategies that are based on open innovation and conducting businesses innovation partnerships. Experience and selected practices studies in the US and Europe are to be revised so that they could be also implemented in the Israeli food industry.

Accelerated kinetic models of food quality losses

Innovative approach is applied to develop accelerated kinetic models are developed under typical food process conditions such as high temperature and short time. Shelf-life simulation and prediction. In addition, the factors that affect food acceptability and durability are also considered. Our focus is placed on the strategies that the new product developer can adopt in order to guarantee a product’s shelf life and the principles on which they are based. The integration of both mathematical models and consumer acceptability are combined.

New product development – Concepts and consumer integration

A paradigm shift is vital in order to successfully cope with the immense risk and the high failure rates of new product development, and the resulting necessary but ever-growing cost. Failure today involves a mind-boggling tag price that has not been reduced in spite of the enormous investments in R&D, consumer research and other product research dimensions. The shift mandates a multidisciplinary team and cross-functional integration of all the development facets including basic R&D, consumer involvement and research, marketing, and management. Studies focus on concepts development, and consumer perception, acceptability, continual and actionable sensory inputs.

Rehydration of food powders containing particulates; porous foods

Rehydration of foods containing particulates focused on various empirical and/or a quasi-mechanistic approaches such as Weibull and Fick’s 2nd law of diffusion. Motivated by the recognition that rehydration of dry food particulates could not be explained and/or modeled solely by a Fickian mechanism, our group that includes a leading physicist from soil science, embarked on a new approach. The latter is a new insight, leading to more advanced and accurate physical models. Mechanisms, such as water imbibition, capillarity and flow in porous media, are considered for describing the ingress of water into the dried food particulates. Basic theory of flow in porous media already developed and widely applied in several domains (e.g. soil science, petroleum and chemical engineering) are used in order to elucidate the mechanism(s) governing the food rate limited uptake of water and other liquids. Simultaneously, the paramount role of physical properties of the food particulates (e.g. pore-size distribution, heterogeneity, tortuosity, contact angle) and the embedding liquid (e.g. density, viscosity, temperature) are studied in order to overcome what seems to date lack of integration in the modeling of the process. Our main objective is to elucidate the mechanism(s) playing key role and to model the transport of a liquid into porous media such as dried foods. An integrated approach is utilized to overcome the immense complexity anticipated, and to open new avenues for optimization of food rehydration.

Development of a legume infant formula

Non-dairy based infant formulae have been developed for infants allergic to cow's milk-based formulae are almost entirely based on soybeans. To date, soy-based infant formulae account for about 25% of the infant formulae sold. Numerous concerns have been raised regarding the phytoestrogenic isoflavone content of soy-based formulae. The daily intakes of isoflavone values found for infants fed soy-based formulae have been from 1.6 to 6.6 mg/kg of body weight. The daily exposure of infants to isoflavones in soy-formulas is 6-11 folds higher on a bodyweight basis than the dose that has hormonal effects on adults consuming soy foods, whereas the contribution of isoflavones from breast-milk and cow-milk is negligible. The safety of soy for infant feeding is thus highly questionable. The new developed chickpea-based infant formula contains no phytoestrogenes at all, and therefore may offer a safer and healthier non- allergenic non-dairy (vegetarian) formula. Our studies are focusing on the further improving the nutritional value of the raw material using enzymatic and other technical approaches.

Surface chemistry, wetting and adhesion characteristics

Wetting of substrates by liquids is a fundamental phenomenon, often characterized by means of contact angle measurement. On real surfaces, which are rough and heterogeneous to some extent, the only measurable value is the apparent contact angle. The latter depends on the anisotropies of the surface in addition to contact angle hysteresis phenomena leading to frequently contradictory data. Mechanical energy, imparted to the liquid by vibration, assisted to overcome the energy barriers, existing on rough surfaces, and facilitated reaching equilibrium state at the global minimum free energy. Our new method utilizes a vibrating system for the measurement of apparent contact angles at the global energy minimum on real surfaces. The reliability of the method has been demonstrated by the fact that the ideal contact angles of all surfaces, as calculated from the Wenzel equation, came out to be practically identical. The method was applied to quantify the effect of plastic food packages (e.g., low linear density polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate) roughness, and surface treatment on wettability. Surface treatments such as commercial corona discharge treatment are also studied. Other interactions between the packaging material(s), surface treatments, and foods are studied.

Deep fat frying: Engineering, nutrition and consumer aspects

Deep fat frying unique contribution to sensory characteristics, together with the relatively low cost of large-scale frying, has made fried foods the staples of the ever-growing fast food industry. Despite its considerable fat content and intensified consumers’ awareness of the relationships between food, nutrition and health, frying remains a principal cooking method. Oil consumption especially saturated fat is considered a major factor increasing health risks (e.g., coronary heart disease, cancer). Generation of acrylamide during frying is another typical example. A side from their high caloric value, fried foods can be nutritious and favorably compared with other cooking methods such as baking and boiling. Misconceptions about frying extend beyond nutrition to the fundamental aspects of the process, fryer design, the role of water and oil quality during frying. For instance, water released during frying was found enhances heat transfer, may cause oil deterioration, and in some cases can prevent oxidation. Improving fryer design, oil quality, the mechanism of oil, coating, residence time, are typical examples of frying technology that are studied.