College of Food Science and Nutrition Engineering, China Agricultural University

Lite Li

  The laboratory has carried out a series of studies on improvement of quality and function about Chinese traditional food in recent years. Our research focused on the quality improvement of staple food such as noodles, rice noodles, and steamed bread, etc. We also studied the quality and function of soy and its productions, such as douchi, sufu, and soybean paste, etc. The mechanism and application of ohmic heating and electrolyzed functional water in food science were also involved in our study. There were some achievements through the studies in these years.
  For example, the gel strength and the quality of the rice noodles have been improved by adding green persimmon juice. The taste and quality of okara has been improved by reducing particle size while using the method of microbial fermentation. During the research, we found that traditional Chinese fermented soybean food had a powerful angiotensin–converting enzyme inhibitory activity, α–glucoseinhibitory activity, and acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity. The animal trial (cholesterol–fed rats) shows that the Douchi extract had very strong antioxidant ability. It had been improved that antioxidant ability can mitigate the lipidosis of hepatocytes.
  Through these studies, we are committed to promote the development of traditional food industrialization. By investigating manufacture procedure, it could be figured out when and how those functional components were formed, and then the manufacture procedures were improved to enrich the favorable components.

Fig.4 The structure of protein network changes of rice noodle samples added green persimmon juice.
  Scanning electron microscope images (Image 4) showed that gel strength could be enhanced and thus the quality be improved in rice noodle by adding the green persimmon juice.