Understanding and manipulating porosity during food manufacturing can affect a food's health benefits, according to a recent study.

Researchers Younsoo Lee and Pawan Takhar at the University of Illinois reports that controlling the number and size of pores in processed foods allows manufacturers to use less salt while satisfying consumers' taste buds. They found that meticulously managing pore pressure in foods during frying reduces oil uptake, which results in lower-fat snacks without sacrificing our predilection for fried foods' texture and taste.

"Six in 10 American adults either have high blood pressure or are on the borderline of this diagnosis largely because they eat too much salt," Lee said in a statement regarding salt. "Overconsuming salt is also associated with the development and severity of cardiovascular and bone diseases, kidney stones, gastric cancer, and asthma."

Because 70 percent of the salt Americans consume comes from processed foods, Lee began to study the relationship between the microstructural properties of these foods and the way salt is released when it is chewed.

"Much of the salt that is added to these foods is not released in our mouths where we can taste it, and that means the rest of the salt is wasted," he said. "We wanted to alter porosity in processed food, targeting a certain fat-protein emulsion structure, to see if we could get more of the salt released during chewing. Then food manufacturers won't have to add as much salt as before, but the consumer will taste almost the same amount of saltiness."

Increasing porosity also changed the way the foods broke apart when they were chewed, exposing more surface area and increasing saltiness, he said.

Takhar said that his porous media approach to understanding the behavior of water, oil, and gas during frying will help create strategies that optimize the frying process, reduce oil uptake, and produce lower-fat foods.

The findings are detailed in the Journal of Food Science.