Lupine (Lupinus spp.) proteins: characteristics, safety and food applications

Lupines (Lupinus spp.) have emerged as a cheap functional food with the advantages of being non-genetically modified crop, able to adapt to harsh conditions and low-input farming. Lupines are rich in protein and poor in starch, similar to soy. The factor limiting the use of lupine is the presence of quinolizidine alkaloids especially in bitter species. Nevertheless, modern breeding programs ensured the selection of sweet lupine species with reduced alkaloid content (≤ 0.2 g/kg DM). Numerous techniques have been employed to produce lupine protein isolates, concentrates and hydrolysates. These proteins are rich in bioactive peptides associated with health-related benefits and have been reported with interesting techno-functional properties. Lupine Protein isolates and concentrates are used mostly for developing healthy foods, while hydrolysates are more applied in nutraceutical and cosmetic industries. Further research is needed to ensure better safety and wider spectrum of application through adequate strategies for allergenicity mitigation and improving techno-functionality

Edible insects as foods: mapping scientific publications and product launches in the global market (1996-2021)

Edible insects are gaining interest for their health and environmental merits as human food. Within this framework, the main objectives of this research are to fill the gap between market trends and scientific research about the status of edible insects in foods, suggest a roadmap for future research and boost product launches. For these reasons, an attempt has been made to review the progress of scientific documents related to edible insect foods and to detect the prominent trends in insect-based foods during the period 1996-2021. By putting the findings of these searches together, we were able to observe that scientific publications have increased exponentially since 2015 – similar to product launches but at a higher speed. Europe was found to be the most prolific region in terms of publications and food product numbers due to increased awareness of the benefits of insects. Market data offered insights into the main selling countries, food applications and insect ingredients. In the future, food formulators will still have to find innovative solutions to offer insect-based foods with pleasant flavours and textures and, in turn, contribute to healthy and sustainable gastronomy. Ensuring safety and setting a clear legislative framework will further organise the sector and thus boost edible insects as a future food commodity

A Complete Mass Spectrometry (MS)-Based Peptidomic Description of Gluten Peptides Generated During In Vitro Gastrointestinal Digestion of Durum Wheat: Implication for Celiac Disease

Resistance of gluten to gastrointestinal digestion is involved in immune-mediated adverse reactions to wheat, since several peptides produced by the incomplete digestion are able to trigger, in predisposed individuals, the immune response responsible, for instance, of celiac disease (CD) and other adverse reactions. Even if several peptides have been identified, an exhaustive description of the peptidome generated by wheat digestion is lacking. To this end, in the present work, durum wheat proteins were fractionated, digested, and then subjected to various proteomic techniques, including single stage and multiple stage mass spectrometry (MS) (SDS-PAGE, UPLC/ESI-MS, UPLC/ESI-MS/MS, and LTQ-Orbitrap). Based on SDS-PAGE, although proteins were severely degraded after in vitro gastrointestinal digestion, some differences were observed among protein profile of the different digests. Through untargeted UPLC techniques, 227 peptide sequences were identified, with only few sequences shared by the different digests. In particular, 9 gluten peptides involved in CD were identified. Based on target proteomic, the quantification of these peptides revealed significant (p ≤ 0.05) differences among the different extracts. Taken together, all the proteomic tools confirmed that gluten digestion is closely related to the matrix regardless of wheat genotype. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

Tracking celiac disease-triggering peptides and whole wheat flour quality as function of germination kinetics

Germination is already a well-accepted process by consumers with many products made from sprouted seeds or containing limited amounts of flour form sprouted grains. The present work aimed assessing the usefulness of germination in reducing gluten peptides associated with celiac disease, at the same time evaluating some technological features of the obtained germinated wheat. In the first part of the work, celiac disease (CD)-triggering peptides were tracked as a function of germination kinetics (from day 1 to day 6). Using simulated gastrointestinal digestion and liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry, ten celiac disease triggering peptides were identified: seven peptides presumably involved in the adaptive immune response (TI) and three peptides mainly involved in the innate immune response (TT). All the identified peptides belonged to gliadins. TI track pattern showed three phases: the first two days displayed a significant degradation, a stability phase was observed from day 3 to day 5, and finally a drastic reduction occurred on the 6th day. For TT peptides, important degradation was exclusively observed at the 6th day. In the second part, some techno-functional features of germinated whole wheat flour were assessed to estimate its potential as an alternative to conventional flour. Functionality comparison of the non-germinated versus germinated flours revealed that germination significantly influenced solvents retention capacities as well as swelling and solubility. Thus, with a reduced amount of celiac disease triggering peptides, but also with different technological behavior compared to traditional wheat flour

Semi-solid fibre syrup for sugar reduction in cookies

Since sugar reduction is a pillar of the international nutritional guideline, the food industry is constantly looking for new ingredients able to replace sugar technological functionality while satisfying the consumer's request for clean label. Based on corn (Zea mays) dextrin and seed coats of chickpeas (testa of Cicer arietinum seed), a fibre syrup was tested as bulking agent in cookies to reach 30% and 50% sugar reduction. Cookies were characterised for their physicochemical, rheological and sensorial attributes. Fibre syrup addition did neither hinder dough workability nor require changes in cookie production procedure. The use of the fibre syrup permitted to partially preserve the structural strength of cookies and increased their red colour index. Moreover, the fibre syrup use allowed to obtain sugar-reduced cookies qualified for ‘reduced in sugar’ and ‘high in fibre’ nutritional claims

A multilevel investigation supported by multivariate analysis for tomato product formulation

Industrial processing of tomato includes its cutting and mincing, thermal treatments, and the addition of ingredients, which might induce changes in physicochemical properties of the final products. In this frame, the impact of texturing/thickening [xanthan gum (X) or potato fiber (F)] on the macroscopic, mesoscopic and molecular properties of tomato double concentrate (TDC) was investigated to determine if F can efficiently substitute X, in association with small solutes (sugar and salt) and thermal treatment (cold and hot). At a macroscopic level, multivariate statistics (MANOVA) underlined that color change (ΔE) was increased by X and F addition contrary to heating and the addition of salt and sugar. MANOVA revealed that texture was greatly enhanced through the use of F over X. 1H NMR molecular mobility changes were more controlled by texturing agents (F and X) than thermal treatment and small solutes. Particularly F increased the more rigid population indicating stronger interaction with water molecules resulting in shear-thinning flow. However, adding X contributed into the increase of the dynamic and mobile populations. Therefore, F can be a valid “clean label” substitute of X in modulating tomato products properties

An overview of the Italian market for 2015: cooking quality and nutritional value of gluten-free pasta

A roundup of gluten-free (GF) pasta sold in the Italian market in 2015 was characterised throughout cooking behaviour, texture, colour and nutritional value. A preliminary evaluation of cooking quality of the thirty-three available products underlined an extremely heterogeneous technological quality. Eleven categories were, therefore, discriminated based on the main ingredients declared on the labels. Interestingly, the most numerous category (rice and corn) was pulverised on the factorial space indicating highly heterogeneous properties. This result was confirmed throughout multivariate statistics and can be likely due to diversity in ingredients proportions or/and processing. Nutritional evaluation of GF pasta pointed out a good nutritional quality. Therefore, the combination of technological and nutritional analyses demonstrated a huge difference among the analysed pasta samples, which can increase the difficulty of consumers to make their choice, and leaves room for further improvement of GF pasta formulation and productive processing