Effect of substitution of sucrose with maltitol on the quality of low-sugar type of dried-pork slice

In order to reduce the sucrose content, improve softness and increase water content while maintaining the water activity in dried-pork slice, the maltitol, a functional sweetener, was used to partly replace the sucrose ( 0%, 25%, 50% and75%) .The cooking yield, shearing force, water content, water activity, color, T2 relaxation time and sensory properties were measured to evaluate the quality changes. The results revealed that cooking yield and water content of dried-pork slice increased significantly with the increase of maltitol content, while shearing force and redness ( a*value) decreased significantly ( p < 0.05) .There were no significant difference in water activity among different groups ( p > 0.05) .The low-field NMR analysis found that there were three or four peaks in T2 relaxation time of dried-pork slice.With the increase of maltitol, both T21 and T22were declined, which indicated that the water holding ability of dried-pork slice were improved.Overall, the partly-replaced of sugar with maltitol ( 50% replacement) had an acceptable effect in dried-pork slice processing. In this group, cooking yield, water content, shearing force, water activity were 52.36%, 29.65%, 27.96 N and 0.883.Besides the redness, the color of driedpork slice had no obvious change and the sensory evaluation had no significant difference compared with the contol group.