Gum+Arabic+by+gkm

Gum arabic is also known as gum acacia, Turkey gum and gun senegal. It is comes form the tree of species Acacia of the Leguminosae family. The gum arabic is actually the sap taken from the tree that already harden. Nowadays, the gum is harvested in large scale for commercially use in many places included Sudan. But of course, gum arabic was cultivated in Arabia and West Asia according to history.



Gum Arabic is unique. It has extremely high solubility in water that other gum cannot compete with. Most gum will be no longer dissolved in water at a concentration higher than 5% and usually create high viscosity. However, gum arabic can even have a concentration that is so high until 50% of the water!

In food industries, gum arabic is widely used. Gum arabic serves as a good stabilizer in many some sense. In beverages, gum arabic keep the flavor in water suspension evenly. The emulsions of citrus oil and other beverage flavor can also be easily done by gum arabic. It is used as sweetener sometimes in beverages productions, and it has great effect on increasing the viscosity of the liquid(thickener).

In confectionery, gum arabic serves as a sugar prevention ingredient. This property of gum arabic allow confections which has high sugar content and low moisture will not having sugar crystal present within it.

There are a lot of foods that actually contain gum arabic as one of the ingredient, such as Coke, pepsi, cookies and etc. ( can you think of some? please share it out )

Can other gum replace gum arabic with same property and functions? i'm now not sure but i found something on internet about this.. click here. Please share your opinion with me. Thanks