Contact

Contact

Contact

Development of sprouting process and characterization of aroma and flavour in Alberta grown high and low tannin faba beans

albertapulse on May 31, 2017

Study lays groundwork for sprouted pulse products

Sprouted faba beans could be a powerful source of protein for consumers, and a profitable new market for growers and processors.

Take a stroll through your local supermarket or health food store and check out the packaged grain products that are for sale. Everything, it seems, is sprouting.

Indeed, sprouted grains are having a moment, with growing popularity driven by consumer demand for healthy food products. As more consumers jump on the sprouted grains bandwagon, there’s no reason why cereal grains should get all the sales. Pulses want in.

Jay Han, Senior Food Scientist at Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s (AF) Food Processing Development Centre in Leduc, has watched the sprouted grains trend with interest. Consumers may feel that sprouted grains somehow ‘sound healthy’. Han wants to look far deeper.

“Sprouting may change the amino acid profile of the grain and increase the digestibility and bioavailability of protein,” Han said. “Just think what happens to barley in the malting process. But sprouting hasn’t been studied very much in regard to pulses.”

In 2017, Han began a three-year study on how best to sprout faba beans and what happens to nutrition and taste when you do. This work is being supported by Alberta Pulse Growers.

How sprouting affects nutrition

Han chose low-tannin and high-tannin faba beans for this study because of their high protein content. Sprouting, of course, is another way of saying germination, which is achieved by steeping grains in water in a consistent and controlled fashion. When it comes to sprouting faba beans, Han’s in new scientific territory.

“There’s no written rule on how to sprout faba beans,” he said. “So the first area we’ll look at is optimization of sprouting. How many days does this take, and what effect does this have on the protein?”

With many years’ experience developing processes and food products around pulses, Han knows that taste will be one factor he’ll contend with. You can sprout faba beans beautifully but if consumers don’t like the taste, they’ll buy the sprouted barley instead. As the second phase of this project, his project team will evaluate the flavour and aroma of sprouted faba beans and create a chemical profile of the aroma. A trained sensory analysis and instrumental flavour analysis will also be conducted by, respectively, AF’s sensory evaluation scientist and a University of Alberta scientist.

The whole point of sprouting faba beans is to deliver protein to the consumer in a nutritionally effective way. In the third component of the project, Han will work with a team at the University of Manitoba that will assess protein quality and how protein digestibility is affected by sprouting.

“This project is timely in a couple of ways,” Han said. “First, sprouting is very trendy with consumers right now. Second, faba bean acreage has really exploded over the past few years. If we can find another use for faba beans, one that’s not so dependent on overseas markets, that’s good for farmers.”

Modifying Microbial Properties of Pea Seed Coat and its Role in Improved Intestinal Integrity and Reduced Insulin Resistance

albertapulse on May 31, 2017

Supplementation of pea seed coats to a high fat diet improves glycemic control, however, the mechanism of action is unknown. The microbiota plays an important role in the development of metabolic disease, including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Two components found in pea seed coats that likely impact the microbiota are the fibre and flavonoid fractions. The research team will explore the impact of these fractions on the microbiota, intestinal barrier function and glucose tolerance in the gut. There are three primary objectives.

  1. Test the direct antimicrobial activity of anthocyanidins (produced upon acid-cleavage of the flavonoid polymer called proanthocyanidins that occur in pea seed coats) on isolates of the gut microbiota;
  2. Determine the changes in the microbiota induced by pea seed coat fractions that are associated with improved glucose tolerance in a high fat diet induced model of glucose intolerance; and
  3. Examine the effect of pea seed coat fractions on the microbiota and intestinal integrity when supplementing a normal-fat diet. The impact of these pea seed coat fractions on intestinal resilience will be studied using a mouse model of E. coli infection. This research will deliver new insight into the benefit of pea seed coat supplementation in the human diet, providing expanded opportunities for use as a functional food. It will also identify characteristics of peas that can be optimized through cultivar selection and development.

Substantiating a Health Claim for Pulses (Bean And Pea) and Cholesterol Lowering

albertapulse on May 31, 2017

Pulses (beans, peas, lentils and chickpeas) are healthy foods that contain twice the amount of protein as cereals, are very high in fibre, key vitamins and minerals like folate and iron and are low in fat. Canada is the world’s largest producer and exporter of lentils and peas, and Alberta produced 34 per cent of the pea crop and 12 per cent of beans in 2010. Current consumption of pulses in Canada is low due to a lack of pulse-based convenient food products. An approved health claim can drive interest in development of food products with particular ingredients as seen with oat beta-glucan. Experts agree that existing evidence for the cholesterol-lowering effects of pulses is particularly strong for beans, but more studies are needed to show the effects of peas, lentils and chickpeas are comparable to beans. In this study, people with high levels of blood cholesterol will consume 90 grams of either beans or peas every day for six weeks to determine the effects of pulse consumption on cholesterol lowering. Results from this study will be used to substantiate a health claim for beans and other pulse crops in the future.

Evaluation of Pulse Fibre Supplement in Obesity and the Metabolic Syndrome, Generating Evidence in Support of Health Claims

albertapulse on May 31, 2017

Obesity is a health crisis. Pulses are part of the solution.

Used as a food ingredient, pulse fibre can help gradually reduce body weight and lower blood glucose levels. It’s not a silver bullet, but this research showed it works.

Obesity is associated with increased incidence of a variety of health conditions, and a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Quite apart from its impact on individuals, obesity brings a huge economic cost. According to the federal government’s Public Health Agency of Canada, the economic impact of obesity in Canada was $4.6 billion annually between 2000 and 2008.

Despite the high human and economic cost of obesity, there are promising strategies for Canadians to help curb obesity and the health complications that go with it: Eat more pulses. Pulse fibre, specifically, has been connected to reduced obesity.

“We know that North Americans don’t consume enough dietary fibre,” said Raylene Reimer, Professor of Nutrition in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary. “That’s what we call the fibre gap – the difference between what’s recommended and what people actually eat.”

Narrowing the fibre gap was the aim of a research project led by Reimer between 2012 and 2015, with funding from Alberta Pulse Growers and others.

New product makes pulse fibre convenient

“In my lab, we are interested in what we call functional ingredients,” Reimer said. “If we could incorporate healthier ingredients like pulse fibre, into something that people eat anyway, that’s a win against the health crisis we currently have going on in Canada.”

Jay Han, Food Scientist at Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s Food Processing Development Centre in Leduc, developed two types of biscuits for Reimer’s study. Subjects in the study ate 200 calories worth of the biscuits each day. The difference was in the amount of pulse fibre, in this case pea fibre. The pea fibre biscuit had 15 grams of fibre, while the control biscuit had just 0.7 grams of other fibre.

One group of people received the pea fibre biscuit to eat, another group the control biscuit, over a period of 12 weeks. Weight, blood sugar and other values were taken before and after the study period.

“This is a food product that, when included in the diet, provides small health benefits that add up over time,” Reimer said. “There’s a slight decrease in body weight, there is an improvement in appetite control and a benefit in terms of blood glucose. You’re not going to quickly lose 50 pounds. The benefit is a natural trajectory of a slow, creeping improvement in body weight.”

The pea fibre biscuit developed for the study by Han, and tested by Reimer in her research, could be just the start of a wave of food products made with pulse fractions such as fibre and protein. It’s one more sign that Alberta pulse producers are growing crops that will feed the world and make it healthier too.

“There’s a benefit from consuming dietary fibre in general and pulse fibre in particular,” Reimer said. “The question is, how can the pulse industry get its products to consumers in a bigger way?”

Value Added Processing of Pulse Grains Using a Novel Technology Called Air Current Assisted Particle Separation Technology (ACAPS)

albertapulse on May 31, 2017

Processing technology could capture more value from faba beans

A technology that works well in cereals could help faba beans become a key ingredient in new food and feed products. U of A Professor Feral Temelli is investigating.

Today, buyers around the world are urgently seeking new sources of plant protein to help meet surging demand from health-conscious consumers. This demand is one reason Alberta farmers have been ramping up pulse crop production over the past several years.

To make the most of this opportunity, however, we’ll need to sell the world more than just raw pulses. By selling more Alberta pulses in processed form, the economic impact of rising pulse consumption can be far greater.

University of Alberta Professor Feral Temelli believes that Air-Current-Assisted Particle Separation Technology (ACAPS) could unlock significant value from pulse crops. ACAPS was developed at U of A for barley and oat processing. Temelli had previously established at lab scale that ACAPS could successfully fractionate dehulled pulse grain.

With funding support from Alberta Pulse Growers, Temelli and two graduate students are now investigating the use of ACAPS for value-added processing of faba beans. Started in 2016, this project will run until early 2019 and focus on three challenges.

Optimization and scale-up of fractionation. “We need to do the optimization at lab scale, to understand how it works and to test it,” explained Temelli. In this phase of the project, she and her team will treat dehulled and milled faba beans with ACAPS to separate-out the starch and protein components. Results will be analyzed to assess how well ACAPS handles value-added faba bean processing on a bigger scale.

Creating a foundation for food application development. In concept, value-added processing of faba beans should usher in new food uses that will be healthy for consumers and profitable for pulse growers as well. To date, many fundamental questions simply haven’t been studied. Temelli and her team will find answers to these questions. “The challenge is to understand the functional properties of different formulations, emulsions and foams,” she said. “If we don’t have proper data, we can’t target the best applications.”

New uses for faba bean hulls. “There are a lot of valuable components in the hull that haven’t received a lot of attention,” said Temelli. Her key target is hydrolysable tannins, which can deliver valuable health benefits. Working with high-tannin varieties, Temelli will determine how best to extract tannin from faba bean hulls. A host of possible food and animal feed applications could ultimately result.

Today, ACAPS is accepted as a technology for processing barley and oats, to extract high-value fractions for food applications. Feral Temelli and her team are laying the groundwork for using ACAPS for pulse crops. With consumers demanding new and healthier food products, the upside for pulse growers appears significant.

“There’s so much interest right now in the utilization of pulse protein and starch ingredients,” said Temelli. “Once we understand their functional properties, that will allow new applications to be developed.”