| Sumario: | Consumers’ growing interest in healthy food products has opened up a new market for the food industry. In an attempt to exploit this market there is a constant search for health promoting ingredients which can be incorporated into functional food products. The cereal fibre mixed-linkage (1→3), (1→4)-β-D-glucan has provoked a special interest due to well documented health benefits and approved health claims. This project aimed at developing pasta with high content of oat β-glucan and to evaluate how incorporation of β-glucan affects cooking quality, colour and sensory properties of semolina pasta. A secondary objective was to review the literature regarding prebiotic potential of cereal β-glucans.
Pasta was produced by substituting durum semolina with different levels of β-glucan rich wholegrain oat flour or oat bran concentrate. For each β-glucan source, three tagli-atelle samples containing 1%, 2%, or 3% β-glucan were produced. A sample containing both oat flour and oat bran concentrate was also developed. Cooking quality was evaluated by measuring optimal cooking time, cooking loss and water absorption. Stickiness, firmness, elasticity, grain flavour and colour were also evaluated. Generally, addition of β-glucan was found to increase cooking loss, decrease elasticity and to reduce the brightness and yellowness of pasta. The effect was dependent both on the source of β-glucan, and on the level of incorporation. Overall, oat flour had a negative impact on pasta quality, while pasta with oat bran concentrate showed quality characteristics similar to the control.
This study suggests that the use of oat fractions to replace semolina may be possible in order to obtain pasta with high content of β-glucan and potential health benefits. The results also suggest that it is possible to produce acceptable pasta which fulfils the criteria for health claims regarding β-glucan and maintained and/or reduced cholesterol levels. Regarding prebiotic effect of β-glucan enriched products the evidence is still insufficient and more in vivo studies are required to determine if β-glucan selectively promotes growth and activity of probiotic bacteria.
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