Mellower yellow

by Amina Ali

rying to spread butter on your toast straight out of the fridge is frustrating, if not impossible. But if U of G researchers have their way, the exercise will soon be a mellow event.

Food science professors Art Hill and Alex Marangoni and doctoral student Derick Rousseau are using biological and chemical techniques to increase the spreadability of butter.

"We want people to take butter directly out of the fridge, spread it on a piece of bread and say: 'I can't believe it's not margarine,'" says Hill.

They've used three different strategies to achieve their goal. The first and simplest technique involves blending butter with vegetable oil, specifically Canadian-developed canola oil. With its high level of monounsaturated oleic fatty acid, it's a heart-healthy vegetable oil. The blends improve the spreadability of butter at cold temperatures and create a nutritionally superior value-added product.

That's great for people who store their butter in the fridge, but it doesn't work at room temperature. So the researchers are trying another approach called chemical interesterification. It involves chemically rearranging the fatty acids in butter in a random fashion. Although the technique works, it gives the transformed butter an odd fruit punch flavor, according to sensory taste panelists.

The researchers are also trying enzymatic interesterification, using enzymes -- proteins that speed up chemical reactions. The reaction conditions used in enzymatic interesterification are milder than those used in chemical interesterification, so the fragile nature and taste of butter are preserved.

The researchers think there's a market abroad for Canadian butter, which could capitalize on Canada's image and the success of other export agri-food products such as wheat, pork, wine and maple syrup. They say improving the spreadability and nutritional properties of butter could make it a more valuable export commodity.

"A more spreadable butter is a value-added product that will boost the Canadian dairy industry," says Rousseau.

This research is sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.