Banana plant extract may help you relish melt-proof ice cream
New York: Love to savour your ice cream in its solid state for longer and hate to see it melt? Scientists have found a solution to this problem in a banana plant extract that they say could be key to a creamier and longer lasting ice cream.
The findings showed that adding tiny cellulose fibres extracted from banana plant waste to ice cream could slow melting, increase shelf life and potentially replace fats used to make the tasty treat.
"Our findings suggest that cellulose nanofibres extracted from banana waste could help improve ice cream in several ways," Robin Zuluaga Gallego, from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Colombia.
"In particular, the fibres could lead to the development of a thicker and more palatable dessert, which would take longer to melt. As a result, this would allow for a more relaxing and enjoyable experience with the food, especially in warm weather," Gallego added.
For the study, presented at the 255th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans, the team extracted cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs), which are thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, from ground-up banana stems or rachis.
Then they mixed the CNFs into ice cream at varying concentrations, ranging from zero up to three-tenths of a gram per 100 grams of the dessert.
They found that ice creams mixed with CNFs tended to melt much more slowly than traditional ice creams.
They also determined that CNFs could increase shelf life of ice cream, or at least decrease its sensitivity to temperature changes that occur when moved to and from the freezer.
In addition, CNFs increased the viscosity of low-fat ice cream, which improved the creaminess and texture of the product.
This suggests that CNFs could help stabilise the fat structure in ice creams. As a result, CNFs could potentially replace some of the fats -- and perhaps reduce calories -- in these desserts, the researchers noted.
Moving forward, the researchers plan to explore how different types of fat, such as coconut oil and milk fat, affect the behaviour of CNFs in other frozen treats.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
MP: 7-year-old girl raped and murdered; minor relative detained
Barwani (MP), Jan 28 (PTI) Police on Wednesday detained a 17-year-old relative of a seven-year-old girl in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh for allegedly raping her and killing her by throwing her into a canal, a police official said.
Superintendent of Police Jagdish Dawar told reporters that the body of the child was recovered from the Indira Sagar Canal on January 26, following information from residents of a village in the Rajpur police station area of the district.
He said the post-mortem report concluded severe injuries to the girl’s private parts and attributed her death to drowning.
Dawar said a 17-year-old boy, a close relative of the girl, has been detained in connection with the rape-murder.
The teenager told the police that he kidnapped the girl from her home on the night of January 25 while her family members were asleep, took her to a nearby canal and raped her, according to the official.
When the girl started screaming during the sexual assault, the minor boy allegedly threw her into the canal, with the intention of killing her. The child drowned in the water body, the official said.
The detained minor will be produced in a juvenile court.
A case has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and an investigation is underway, he added.
