The Effect of Storage on Potentially Synbiotic Emulsion Spread Based on Milk Fat and Inulin
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
Authors have addressed all of the raised remarks and I suggest the acceptance of the paper.
Author Response
Once again - thank you very much for your review that allowed us to improve the quality of our paper.
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
Reviewers' comments for The Effect of Storage on Potentially Synbiotic Emulsion Spread Based on Milk Fat and Inulin
This manuscript titled “The Effect of Storage on Potentially Synbiotic Emulsion Spread Based on Milk Fat and Inulin” (Manuscript Number: applsci-2049439) presents effects of four-week storage on rheological and structural properties, sensory properties and survival of probiotics in milk fat-inulin emulsion as a product designed for spreading on bread. However, the following problems have to be resolved before ready for publishing.
1. Major points
(1) The keywords are too many to need to be merged or deleted. It is recommended to have “milk fat-inulin emulsion” in place of “inulin; emulsion; milk fat”, “textural and rheological properties” instead of “texture; rheology”.
(2) In lines 59 to 81, when introducing the current research status of inulin spread, problems existing in previous studies should be added to make the content more complete, which makes easy to introduce the research purpose and content of this paper.
(3) In lines 110-112, the sensory analysis only analyzes the samples 48h after production, not the stored samples, so it is not possible to determine whether the samples still have good sensory and edible quality after storage.
(4) In the section “2.7. Sensory evaluation”, whether putting ham on the sandwich affects sensory evaluation of the spread.
(5) Please check and correct the spelling error. For example, “Synbiotic” should be changed to “Symbiotic” in title.
2. Minor points
(1) The labels in the upper right corner of Figure 1 are too far away from the error line, and the error line is not fully displayed. Please modify it.
(2) In lines 175 and 196, the content section that describes no significant differences should be used (p>0.05) rather than (p≤0.05).
Author Response
Thank you very much for your review and valuable comments. We corrected the text where it was possible. In case of a few remarks, we did some explanations which we hope will shed a new light on our paper.
- Major points
(1) The keywords are too many to need to be merged or deleted. It is recommended to have “milk fat-inulin emulsion” in place of “inulin; emulsion; milk fat”, “textural and rheological properties” instead of “texture; rheology”.
Thank you for this remark, we did appropriate changes
(2) In lines 59 to 81, when introducing the current research status of inulin spread, problems existing in previous studies should be added to make the content more complete, which makes easy to introduce the research purpose and content of this paper.
This is a very interesting point, but not wanting to blur the introduction, we focused on the most important results bearing in mind to write it in a concise way. Many different studies and processes were carried out in the cited works, no longer relevant at this stage. We believe that readers wishing to explore the cited studies will easily find them to study in details. Each of the cited study gave us knowledge to move on to the next step.
(3) In lines 110-112, the sensory analysis only analyzes the samples 48h after production, not the stored samples, so it is not possible to determine whether the samples still have good sensory and edible quality after storage.
Thank you very much for your comment. Generally, we totally agree with you that the sensory analysis should take place at the end of the storage period. However, since we did our product in a laboratory where different microorganisms are tested and we did not have the air quality control, we did not want to risk the health of our panelists. Of course, with a very high probability nothing would happened, especially that microbiology analysis confirmed that the product was microbiology stable but from our perspective the most important thing was independent instrumental analysis. Anyway, the sensory analysis of a quite fresh product showed that it is necessary to carry out further studies in order to improve the taste of such emulsion.
(4) In the section “2.7. Sensory evaluation”, whether putting ham on the sandwich affects sensory evaluation of the spread.
Fair point. We explained this in section 3. 3. Sensory analysis. Maybe you missed this: Since in the previous studies the analysed emulsion was assessed in its pure form, this time we decided to conduct a sensory analysis, making the tested samples similar to the kitchen reality by preparing sandwiches made of toasted bread with ham, because usually no one eats spread alone.
(5) Please check and correct the spelling error. For example, “Synbiotic” should be changed to “Symbiotic” in title.
It is not an error. When you combine prebiotic and probiotic you obtained synbiotic, not symbiotic product.
- Minor points
(1) The labels in the upper right corner of Figure 1 are too far away from the error line, and the error line is not fully displayed. Please modify it.
Thank you for this remark, we did appropriate changes
(2) In lines 175 and 196, the content section that describes no significant differences should be used (p>0.05) rather than (p≤0.05).
Thank you for this remark. We believe that the phrase “No significant (p ≤ 0.05) differences were recorded for…” or “Hardness, cohesiveness, and adhesiveness (Figure 1) did not change significantly (p ≤ 0.05)” underlines that the differences of the obtained values are not significant at 95% confidence interval, which means p ≤ 0.05. Of course we could rephrase the sentences that P value was higher than 0.05 for the compared samples but actually we did not calculate p value, but did our analysis at 95% confidence interval, so from our perspective the present phrase is more accurate to what we did.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper investigated the stability of novel type, potentially functional, food product, during the storage period.
I suggest minor revision.
General remark:
- manuscript text should be impersonal
- the names of microorganisms should be written in intalic
- significance P should be written as p and letters in tables that indicate significance should be written as a,b et., and not A, B etc.
- in subchapters 2.3-2.5, the unit for the expression of the results should be stated clearly
- in Conclusions, the method that can confirm the products functionatility should be suggested
Specific remarks:
- line 2: in order to make the title of the manuscript more clear I suggest the following change: The Effect of Storage on Potentially Synbiotic Emulsion Spread Based on Milk Fat and Inulin
- lines 16-17: the complete composition of the emulsion should be given
- line 21: „107“ should be changed to „107“ (7 is in exponent)
- line 57: „as well“ should be changed to „as well as“
- line 152: „1cm3“ should be changed to „1 cm3“ (3 is in exponent)
-line 170-171: „fatty acid“ should be changed to „fatty acids“
- line 215: „4th“ should be changed to „4th“ (th is in exponent)
- line 276: „the taste“ should be changed to „taste“
Reviewer 2 Report
This study investigated the effect of formulation parameters on rheological properties, bacterial viability and fatty acid profile changes.
This study had a problem in design, for example, the survival of bacteria and fatty acids profile were analyzed at intervals of one week, but the sensory evaluation was done only in the first 48 hours. Sensory evaluation has a key role in checking the shelf life.
Based on Table 2, there were a significant off –flavor and off-taste in milk fat inulin samples. The results reported in the abstract are inconsistent with the results in the table2.
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript applsci-1958337 titled “The effect of storage potentially synbiotic emulsion spread based on milk fat and inulin” showed the effect of storage (4 weeks, 4 °C) on the rheological and textural properties of milk fat-inulin emulsion supplemented with lactic acid bacteria as an alternative health product to commercial margarines.
The subjects studied are deficient of enough novelty to publication in applied science. The rheological and textural properties of the same composition of emulsion spreads supplemented with probiotic bacteria have been already published before by (Toczek et al. 2022; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.idairyj.2021.105217). The author only tested the effect of storage at 4°C. The manuscript lacks different storage conditions such as the frozen storage (-20°C), followed by thawing.
There are many concerns in this study:
- The title and abstract writing style is very poor and needs to be improved
- Although the authors designed the product for spreading on bread, the results indicated that four weeks of storage of the tested emulsions cause a significant increase in the spreadability values (i.e. the samples were more difficult to spread) after 14, 21 and 28 days of storage. The lack of change in texture during storage is expected from the milk fat-inulin emulsion and already published previously. Moreover, the definition of spreadability is unclear and misleading.
- A major concern is that the study lacks a comparison to the margarines available in the market, comparison with value in literature is not enough since each experiment has specific conditions.
- The authors must be cautious of generalizing the obtained results, for example line 190: “Four weeks of storage generally did not significantly affect the rheological and textural properties of the tested emulsions” which is wrong since many parameters were significantly different after storage. Line 215: “A slight decrease in apparent viscosity in the 4th week of storage has also been recorded” This statement is not right. A significant decrease was shown in figure 2. Using the words like “slight increase” and “quite stable” “some fluctuations” is not helpful.
- In microbiological analyses: it is well known that probiotic strains are sensitive during cold storage and the author reported that storage time did not adversely affect the bacterial viability. To confirm this observation, the plate count must be performed triplicate and independent but not two technical replicates (Line 154: “The plate count method was carried out in duplicate.”). I wonder how the author performed statistical analysis using only two replicates (Table 1 “no SD”)? what is the statistical analysis method used? It could not be found in the material and methods section. Positive control with commercial product or other emulsions is recommended.
- How do the authors explain the significant increase in pH in the products after two weeks of storage while the microrganisms did not have higher growth?
- Line 284: “Analysis of fatty acid composition in fat extracted from the milk fat-inulin spread stored at 5°C for four weeks showed a lack of significant changes in most analysed groups” This statement is not right. Significant changes were observed in SFA, PUFA, and n-3.
- Some of the figures and tables (including legends) require additional information for ease of interpretation by the reader such as (figure 1 legend need additional information and should be divided into a, b, c, and d; the same for Figure 2; Table 1 and 2 abbreviations must be listed in the footnote). The microorganisms’ names must be italicized (Line 153 and154).
The conclusion was not fully supported by the obtained results. Therefore, due to the serious drawbacks detailed above, I regret to reject the paper in the present form. I find it necessary to improve the manuscript and additional experiments are required.
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear Authors,
please provides original graphs for rheological characterstics and microbial analysis images.
