![]() ![]() ![]() The first flavor composition in a flavor-changing gum is usually the unencapsulated liquid flavor or a starch sugar coating on the surface of the gum, so that the first flavor can be released on contact with saliva. By creating microcapsules with different dissolution times, the release of several different flavor capsules can be staggered to make a chewing gum that “changes flavors”. So how does the flavor-changing gum work? The secret lies in the fact that the tiny flavor capsules in a chewing gum can be engineered to release at different times. The Coacervation Process: (a) The oily flavor droplets float around in an emulsion of the shell polymer solution, (b) The coacervation solution separates into the coacvervate and the solvent (c) The coacervate surrounds the outside of the flavor core, (d) And forms a continuous crosslinked polymer shell around the core. Once the shells around the oil droplets are formed, the rest of the solution is washed out and the entire capsules are dried so that they can be incorporated into the chewing gum base. The coacervation solution then separates into two liquid phases – one called a “coacervate” that contains the many tiny oily droplets that contain the polymers and the other is called the “equilibrium liquid”, which serves as the solvent. These two polymers are diluted into water and then controlled for both pH and temperature, so that when an oily substance (such as a flavoring oil) is mixed into the solution, the molecules form a chemically crosslinked, shell-like film around each of the oil particles, resulting in the encapsulated flavor beads present in chewing gum! This process involves an aqueous solution with two or more oppositely charged polymers – one with positive charge (such as gelatin or agar), and another with negative charge (such as carboxymethylcellulose or gum arabic). While there are various methods for flavor encapsulation, the technique which is used to make the capsules in chewing gum is the chemical process called complex coacervation. The fruity flavor is released once you chew on the gum and break open the shells of the strawberry capsules to release the flavoring oils in your mouth. The gum will be studded and mixed with microcapsules filled with strawberry flavoring oils those are the beady dots you sometimes see on the chewing gum surface. So let’s say you have a stick of strawberry-flavored chewing gum. Chewing gums contain these little flavor microcapsules the core of each microcapsule is usually some sort of liquid flavoring, and the shell is made of crosslinked proteins which stabilize the core material, isolate the core from the chewing gum base, and will break apart in response to the shear forces of chewing to release the core flavoring. To get any sort of flavor in a chewing gum in the first place, a process called microencapsulation is used, in which a core of tiny flavor particles is surrounded by a shell coating to produce minuscule spherical capsules – we’re talking diameters of roughly a couple hundred micrometers in size.
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