acacia gum > HISTORY print
 

Acacia gum natural colloid is nowadays incorporated into many food and non-food products, that are used in everyday life. But did you know that Acacia Gum properties have been known since Ancient Times?

IN ANCIENT EGYPT

   

Acacia gum has been trade since the most remote records of historical antiquity. Representations of the Acacia tree, together with heaps of gum, were pictured during the reign of Ramses III in Egypt. Not only the Egyptians used it as an adhesive for papyrus sheets, but also as a fixative for the ink on the papyrus or to coat the mummy bandages. But Acacia was already used for its soothing influence on irritated or inflamed mucous tissues, in diarrhoea and dysentery , to remove tenesmus and painful stools, in catarrh, cough, etc.

Acacia was exported from the Gulf of Aden, seventeen hundred years before Christ. Mention of the gum is of frequent occurrence in Egyptian inscriptions, where it is referred to as the Gum of Canaan. Theophrastus, in the third and fourth centuries before Christ, described it, as also did Dioscorides and Pliny, under the name "Egyptian Gum."
dURING THE MIDDLE AGES
   
Acacia gum has been employed in the arts from all time and in domestic medicine and commerce, as well as by the Arabian physicians and those of the renowned school of Salerno. During the Middle Ages it was obtained from Egypt and Turkey, being an article of commerce in the bazaars of Constantinople. The drug was distributed through Europe from Venice.
IN INDIA
   
At one time a reexport trade also developed in India, mainly around Bombay. Here the gum acquired the name of East Indian gum or Indian gum , but it was not of Indian origin as it was imported from Africa and Arabia and then reexported to Europe and America. Indian gum should not be confused with India gum which is an entirely different product, more commonly known as gum gatthi .
NOWADAYS
 

Acacia gums are widely used in the food and pharmaceutical industry for their unrivalled technological_properties:

•  Emulsifier for oil in water emulsion,

•  Carrier for encapsulation,

•  Stabilizer for colloidal systems.

•  Texturiser in sugar and polyols medium,

•  Film former avoiding fat, water and gaz migration,

•  Binder for sugar and polyols compressed products,

 

For more than ten years, CNI has also been a major_player in the development of nutritional applications. FIBREGUM™ offers to nutritionists and food technologists an ideal_fibre: it modulates the beneficial_intestinal_flora, allows strong nutritional claims, and improves food_processes.

Unlike to many other food ingredients that try to replace it, Acacia gum is natural, GMO free, and not chemically or enzymatically modified, fulfilling completely the strong demand of consumers for natural products, and bringing valuable labelling and image to the finished goods.

Moreover, Gum arabic is a key issue of the ecological, cultural and economical development of Africa, as it is often the main_source_of_revenue for semi-nomadic African people who gather it from wild, untended plants. But also, acacia trees fix the soil and prevent desertification, fertilizing it by fixing atmospheric nitrogen, and also by producing firewood, food for animals and people, and other products.