Challenges in exploring microfluidization and enzymatic methods to mitigate soybean allergenicity

In the context of high population growth, total protein demand will be doubled by 2050 to reach 943.5 million tons, and it is crucial to explore substitutes for animal-based protein. In the past few years, some significant changes in food trends emerging, such as the concept of "everything plant-based." Among the plant-based sources, soybean protein is essential for human health due to its amino acid profile and high quality of protein. However, it is known that soybean is one of the eight biggest allergens among milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, and wheat. Although food allergies represent significant challenges to human health, many techniques are investigated in the literature, such as boiling, fermentation, high-pressure processing, and many more, in order to reduce allergens. So, consuming plant-based proteins is a new opportunity to replace animal protein, but at the same time, it comes with a significant challenge in terms of allergenicity management.

Therefore, our research focuses on reducing soybean allergens using microfluidization, enzymatic, and their combinations. Microfluidization alone proved ineffective in reducing the allergenicity of soybean protein isolates (SPIs), even increasing under more harsh specific treatment conditions (higher number of passes). The enzymatic treatment showed a reduction in allergenicity by up to 65.4%. The conditions applied for microfluidization in this study, as a pretreatment prior to enzymatic hydrolysis, show few to no effects on allergenicity in SPIs. However, other processing conditions can be applied to improve better the reduction of allergens related to pressure, number of cycles, temperature, and using a heat treatment as a pretreatment. These findings suggest that more studies in this direction, as well as harmonization and effective methods, are essential for allergen management to guarantee safe food for people who encounter allergies.