A new study has found a technique to progress toward addressing the texture problem in low-fat wieners that are made with olive oil rather than pork fat.
To turn a traditional hot dog that comes with a large dose of pork back-fat into a more healthful frankfurter, the researchers have developed olive oil "bulking agents" to replace the saturated animal fat.
The substitutes contain 55 percent olive oil, which contains more healthful unsaturated fats, and could reduce the calories by more than a third.
To explore factors important to texture, they used a technique called 'Raman spectroscopy' to probe the protein and lipid structures of two low-fat recipes and their relationship with textural properties, and also tested how well they held up during refrigeration.
The researchers identified how protein and lipid structures affect texture and also found that regardless of ingredients, all the franks, including those made with pork fat, responded similarly to cold conditions for nearly three months, which is long enough to last through the entire summer.
This study was published in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.