Xanthan Gum Synthesis

Xanthan gum is a plant based bacterial polysaccharide used as thickening or stabilizing agent in food industry and rheology modifier. Xanthan gum derives its name from the strain of bacteria used during the production process, Xanthomonas campestris. It is produced by a process involving fermentation of glucose, sucrose or lactose by the Xanthomonas campestris bacterium. The result is a gel-like substance that is then purified, dried and milled to create the powder substance sold as xanthan gum. Xanthan gum is used as a thickening and stabilizing agent in variety of foods, personal care products, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, medicine and some other industrial applications.

Xanthan gum has some remarkable properties like:

* Ability to

* Xanthan gum has high pH stability (unlike other gums).

* It can create a creamy texture.

Xanthan gum is most often found in salad dressings, sauces and gravies helping to stabilize the colloidal oil and solid components, allowing the substances to remain evenly dispersed throughout the solution and preventing them to settle on the bottom of the container. It is acting as an emulsifier (although it is not an emulsifier), encouraging liquids that normally don't like one another to mix together. The xanthan gum also makes dressings and sauces thick enough at rest in the bottle to keep the mixture fairly homogeneous, but the shear forces generated by shaking and pouring thins it, so it can be easily poured. When dressing or sauce exits the bottle, the shear forces are removed and it thickens back up, so it clings to the salad or other food as needed.

It is often used in gluten free baking to improve the thickness of gluten free flours, because the consistency of these flours allows the escape of gas released by leavening, allowing them to rise and take shape as a normal flour would and give the dough or batter a "stickiness" that would otherwise be achieved with the

People on gluten free diet or those with severe allergies should be careful because xanthan gum is produced by bacterial fermentation of a sugar-containing medium which is often a potentially allergenic substance such as soy, corn, wheat or dairy and an allergic response may be triggered in people exceedingly sensitive to the growth medium. Although, the vast majority of industrially manufactured xanthan gum contains far less than 20 ppm gluten, which is the limit for "gluten free" labelling in Canada, United States and Europe. Since information about producing practice is not available, you can check with the manufacturer to find out more info on how it is produced or you