Don't expect this in your hospital anytime soon.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=160291&CultureCode=en
Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) and the Research and
Development of Functional Food Centre (CIDAF, for its initials in
Spanish) along with two Italian universities, have developed a
'super-spaghetti' of enriched pasta, elaborated with functional flours,
which contains more fibre and proteins than normal pasta and that helps
reducing the risk of suffering cardiovascular diseases.
The researchers, who published part of their results in Food Research
International magazine, have proven that new green technologies (such
as the so called 'air classification') allow us to obtain functional
flours using the whole cereal grain, thus avoiding waste by-products
production during the milling process.
As Ana María Gómez Caravaca, lead researcher for this project,
explains, the air classification process allows to divide milling
by-products in two different fractions (coarse and fine) by means of a
physical process that doesn't modify the properties of the obtained
fractions.
"These fractions have different chemical characteristics due to their
different properties, and they will be used depending on the final
product we want to obtain. Our work has proven how we can obtain two
fractions by air-classifying whole barley flour, one of them is enriched
in antioxidant compounds and soluble fibre (specially betaglucans), and
the other contains more proteins", the researcher from the UGR says.
More antioxidants and soluble fibre
This research, carried out
with the collaboration of two Italian universities (University of
Bologna and University of Molise) and partially funded by the CEI BioTic
centre, has also been used for elaborating spaghetti using the coarse
fraction. The results obtained have proven that the fraction used in the
elaboration of spaghetti allows to enrich the final product in soluble
fibre (betaglucans) as well as in catechin-derived antioxidant
compounds.
"Comparing the obtained final product with the ones available at the
market we observed that our spaghetti was specially rich in betaglucans.
The amount of betaglucans present in our functional spaghetti fulfilled
the requirements of the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in
order to be able to label it as 'good source of fibre' and 'might lessen
the risk of suffering cardiovascular diseases'".
Not in vane, due to the technological novelty that this product is,
the American Chemical Society (ACS) has devoted an article in its
website to it, calling the product a 'super-spaghetti'
(http://goo.gl/el7d4S).
Professor Gómez Caravaca says that the results obtained so far have
allowed two Italian companies to develop a new line of pasta using
coarse fractions obtained by means of air classification.
"These products allow to reach, with a single dose (a dish of pasta),
70% of the daily betaglucans dose recommended by the European Food
Safety Authority (EFSA)", the researcher concludes.
http://canalugr.es/index.php/ciencia-y-tecnologia-de-la-salud/item/79058
