Effect of fat content on rheological and physical properties of vanilla ice cream

Milk fat is one of the most important components used in ice cream mix formulation، which affects textural and rheological properties of the final product. According to the definitions released by FDA، ice cream products are categorized in several groups (non-fat، low-fat، light، reduced fat and full fat). In this research reduced fat، light، low fat and full fat vanilla ice cream samples were produced with 2، 5، 7. 5 and 10% milk fat respectively، and the rheological properties of the ice cream mix and some physical properties of the ice cream product were evaluated. The results showed that the freezing point and the draw temperatures of the samples were increased with decreasing of fat content. All the ice cream mix samples showed pseudoplastic behaviour and their apparent viscosity tended to decrease with increasing of shear rate. Increasing of fat content made the ice cream mixes to have lower flow behaviour index and thus increased the pseudoplasticity in the mix. The consistency coefficient and the apparent viscosity of the samples also increased significantly with increasing of fat in the samples.