Substituting pulse ingredients for animal-based ingredients can achieve similar performance in some food applications, but will greatly improve nutrition.

From a bigger presence in grocery stores, to rising profile in restaurants, 2019 felt like the year that plant-based protein finally cracked public awareness. Which products and brands will make the most impact? That’s tough to say, but as Dr. Lingyun Chen sees it, there’s little doubt that more innovative products are on the way.

“Plant protein is a hot topic at technical and scientific conferences around the world,” said Chen, Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Alberta. “Several key trends are driving research: meat analogs, dairy replacements and using plant protein ingredients in drink products.”

With funding support from APG and others, Chen and her team are hot on the trail of new ideas that can increase demand for pulses and pulse ingredients, ultimately building new revenue opportunities for growers. Two years ago, for example, she wrapped up development of a faba bean-based concentrate ranging from 60% protein (with a dry process) to 85% protein (with a wet process). That’s a breakthrough with many potential food processing applications.

In 2019, Chen’s focus was mainly on three plant protein-related areas, with all showing good progress.

Stronger, more nutritious gels. The ability of ingredients to form a gel is critical for the food processing industry. Egg white is a traditional gelling agent. Soy also has good gelling qualities, but Chen believes that industry would be open to a gel that is not animal-based and not soy. Peas look promising.

“We’ve found that pea protein is comparable to egg white to form good gels,” Chen said. “Plant proteins normally need a higher temperature than egg white to form gels. We’ve been looking at lowering the gelation temperature and it’s been going very well. Pea protein modified by a physical approach can form a gel with good mechanical strength, that’s stronger than soy and might even be comparable to egg whites.”

Dairy replacements. Products like coffee cream and ice cream are staples in the supermarket. For reasons of dairy sensitivity or personal choice, some consumers would prefer the same product experience without consuming dairy. Chen believes she can help them.

“We have a graduate student who’s been working on identifying a new form of lentil protein aggregate,” she said. “The goal is to make a stable emulsion with the right texture and feeling in the mouth. This could replace dairy in products such as ice cream and salad dressing and could even replace eggs in mayonnaise.”

A protein kick for oat-based drinks. These products are getting well-established among consumers who want a nutritional edge. Even so, oat-based drinks could be even healthier if pulse protein was part of the recipe. Chen is currently working to optimize such a formulation and notes that a pulse/oats tandem could deliver nutritional synergies that are superior to consuming each individually.

Looking ahead to 2020, Chen sees consumers poised to accept more plant-based protein in their diets. Her aim is to make sure that prairie-grown pulses are a big part of this movement.

“There’s a lot of diversity in what’s possible with pulses,” Chen said. “To mimic animal-based ingredients with pulse ingredients results in less fat, higher protein and high dietary fibre. These are pulse-based products that can help change the Canadian diet for the better.”

NAIT’s new Centre for Culinary Innovation sees plenty of opportunity to research and develop new uses for whole pulses and pulse ingredients.

How can you put into words the enjoyment associated with a meal of wheat-based pasta? The bite, the texture and the fill-you-up goodness is known to most of us.

For someone on a gluten-free diet, however, wheat-based pasta is off limits. As for most of the gluten-free pasta alternatives now available, Dana Gibson doesn’t think much of them.

“I’ve tried them, there’s not great selection and not great quality,” said Gibson, Director of Business Development for the new Centre for Culinary Innovation at NAIT in Edmonton. “The ingredients they’re using in order to be gluten-free just don’t have that bite that you get with pasta. It’s just not the same.”

Built at a capital cost of $2.5 million, the Centre’s Research Kitchen has 12 product development stations that are dedicated to applied research and chef-driven product development.

As Gibson explains, the Centre is looking to the future of what people want to eat, and pulses will feature in a major way.

“With the projects we are currently running, 70% of them relate to plant-based ingredients,” Gibson said, “and of those I’d say over half are pulse-based. There’s lots of interest in yellow and green field peas, faba beans, kidney beans and a little bit in mung beans.”

Pasta and ready-made meals close to testing

Gibson’s NAIT colleague Paolo Mussone, Bio/Nanotechnology Research Chair, has already characterized the surface structure of the pulse-based pasta, developed by Chef Maynard Kolskog. He’s now in the process of comparing the pulse-based pasta with traditional wheat-based pasta to see how the different ingredients affect the structure of pasta. This pulse pasta is gluten-free and should be well-suited for a ready-meal product, such as lasagna, that food retailers are scrambling to bring to time-crunched consumers. Sensory testing starts soon.

From there, Gibson sees many possibilities for pulses, which combine high protein, gluten-free status and also offer the kind of ‘mouthfeel’ many gluten-free products currently lack.

“Our Certified Research Chef, Maynard Kolskog, did his first research project in collaboration with Alberta Pulse Growers to develop some sous-vide ready meals with pulses,” Gibson said. “It was very successful, and I think it sparked in him a passion for pulses and the utilization of  Alberta-grown products.”

The Centre for Culinary Innovation can take on product development research and can make its facilities available to food companies that want to test new ideas. Food innovation, after all, needn’t be restricted to large multinationals. The Centre can help smaller Alberta-based companies compete.

All this research and development should boost the fortunes of food companies that embrace pulses, and of course the growers who supply them.

“Freson Bros. is one retailer who’s very interested in developing products that use Alberta- grown ingredients and this type of product would fit right in and would get Albertans eating more pulses,” Gibson said. “Pulses are ideally positioned as a great source of protein that’s gluten-free, hearty in taste and very functional to work with.”

A team of University of Alberta scientists is developing new ways to fractionate faba beans to get at their high-value components.

It’s a good time to be a pulse grower in Alberta. There’s every indication that the pulse sector will diversify beyond its long-standing domestic and global business, through the many new pulse fractionation plants being planned and built in Western Canada.

To unlock the true economic potential of Alberta’s pulse crops, efficient and cost-effective processing methods will need to be developed, tested and perfected. On the other hand, if processing methods proven to work in other crops can be adapted to pulses, why reinvent the wheel?

One example is Air Current-Assisted Particle Separation (ACAPS) technology. Developed at the University of Alberta by Thava Vasanthan, the technology fractionates cereal crops quickly and cost-effectively. Think of ACAPS as a tornado in a chamber, with air lifting the different particles and separating them through a sieve system.

Over the past two years, Feral Temelli, together with her colleague Vasanthan, has been trying to adapt ACAPS for use in faba beans.

“The previous work focused on oat and barley, so there’s still work to be done for faba beans,” said Temelli, Professor of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Alberta. “We’re looking for a better understanding of how to separate and analyze the different components of the faba bean seed.”

Pearling uncovers unique composition of faba beans

Temelli found that faba beans might need some preliminary processing before being fractionated by ACAPS. She concluded that pearling could be just the thing.

With pearling – a process where an abrasive unit scrapes the outer layers off the grain – Temelli can shave off about 6% of the seed at a time. Analysis of these pearled layers showed the faba bean protein concentration was higher on the outside of the bean, while the starch concentrated more towards the centre.

“I believe this was a new finding for faba beans, so we’ve done a lot of composition analysis with these fractions,” she noted. “We also saw a tighter interaction between the fibre and the protein in the outer layer of the faba bean. In fact, the protein seems to stay together with the fibre.”

Between now and mid-2019, Temelli and her team – including one graduate student – will keep working on ACAPS optimization. They will continue analyzing the faba bean fractions and will also examine the effectiveness of water-based processes to separate-out the protein.

With Alberta farmers growing top-quality faba beans, and new fractionation capacity getting ready to roll, keeping more of the economic value of pulse crops here at home is a step in the right direction. Temelli will continue to seek out inventive ways to process pulse crops.

“We’ll be looking into better understanding the protein-fibre interaction,” Temelli said. “We’ll see if we can separate it, or maybe leaving the protein-fibre combination together gives us another new opportunity for a different enriched fraction with unique properties.”

This one-year project aims to make a healthier, no gluten added, longer-storing alternative to wheat-based licorice using red lentil flour.

Pulses have advantages over wheat in many foods. That’s the growing conviction of food scientists as they’ve worked to replace wheat with peas, beans, faba beans and lentils in manufactured food products. Pulse ingredients are known to be higher in protein, higher in fibre and are naturally gluten-free.

One of these pulse/wheat swaps is taking aim at the candy aisle. With funding support from APG and others, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s Food Processing Development Centre in Leduc is partnering with candy-maker Jean Purschke to create licorice made with pulses.

Several pulses would be good candidates. Peas and beans work well functionally, but could lose marks with some consumers for their strong ‘beany’ flavour. Project leader and FPDC Food Scientist Kevin Swallow and Product Development Technologist Olivia Thompson have been working with many of the pulse candidates. One ingredient stands out.

“Red lentil flour works great,” said Swallow. “It has a light pink colour, good functional properties and a bland, non-objectionable flavour.”

Development product shows potential

The one-year project, which began early in 2018, is building on previous work at FPDC. One issue arising from that research was a tendency of lentil-based licorice to ‘sweat’ due to being less efficient than wheat-based licorice at binding water.

By the end of March 2019, Swallow and Thompson expect to develop a final product formulation that beats the sweating issue. They will then scale the process up from benchtop to small-scale commercial quantities. Both black and cherry licorices are under development, with consumer sensory testing to provide the final validation of the project’s work.

“There are so many factors that go into it, beyond just making the licorice,” said Swallow. “Do the ingredients work well together? What’s the flavour profile? What’s the best way to extrude and dry it? All aspects that need to be optimized so that the process can be scaled up on a commercial basis.”

If you’re looking forward to seeing lentil licorice at your local farmers’ market, Swallow, Thompson and Purschke think that’s just a start. Their product has proven to be highly stable, with a long shelf life. That suggests it could be exported around the world and still be fresh when it arrives in-market.

“We found one of the prototypes we made about 18 months ago for International Year of Pulses that we came upon by accident,” Swallow said. “It was still quite soft and tasted good. Try that with most wheat-based licorice on the market: they’re as hard as a rock after about six months.”

Taste, health, storability, gluten-freedom. With so much going for pulse-based licorice, maybe it’s time to ask: why was this candy shop standby made with wheat in the first place?

“We believe these are good and marketable products,” Swallow said, “so it’s exciting. We’re looking forward to doing the rest of the development work and kickstart pulse-based licorice to the next level.”

Two years of R&D found that pulse ingredients can functionally replace wheat-based ingredients in bologna, hot dogs and beef burgers, while boosting nutrition.

In your nearest supermarket, you might find pulses in the canned foods aisle, on the soup shelves or in the dry section next to the rice. That’s today. Look to the future, though, and things could change significantly.

Expect to find pulse ingredients included in far more products in grocery stores. After all, pulse-based ingredients provide health benefits, are higher in protein and, unlike cereal-based alternatives, are also gluten-free.

Since 2016, Zeb Pietrasik has been studying the functionality of a variety of pulse-based ingredients as an alternative to the standard wheat crumb and wheat flour binders used in bologna, hot dogs and beef patties. This research was principally funded by the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency (ALMA) and Alberta Pulse Growers.

“We started with burgers and screened over 30 ingredients, both pulse and non-pulse, and came up with a ‘final four’ binders to use in burgers,” said Pietrasik, Meat Scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s Food Processing Development Centre.

In 2017-18, Pietrasik put his finalists — pea starch, textured pea protein, potato starch and rice flour — through their paces as binders for burger patties. The challenge was to test how these ingredients performed against wheat-based products, then ask consumers to weigh in on the burger’s taste.

Rigorous functionality and sensory testing

“The consumer provides the ultimate test,” Pietrasik said. “You might get very good results from the processing point of view, but if it’s not liked by consumers, there’s no point using it.”

Pietrasik’s research showed that pea starch and textured pea protein ranked the highest in functionality and consumer acceptability in beef burgers. Pietrasik’s team further pushed the envelope to improve the firmness and juiciness of the burgers by using a 50/50 blend of pea starch and fibre. Consumers loved it.

For bologna and hot dogs, Pietrasik’s research looked at alternatives to the wheat flour typically used as a binder in these products. The data showed that white navy bean flour and pea starch were strong candidates for substitution, without sacrificing functionality or consumer acceptance. Nutritionally, they’d be superior.

Having done this applied research, Pietrasik is now going out to industry with the findings. A well-received presentation to the Canadian Meat Council Conference in May 2018 confirmed what Pietrasik suspected: that food manufacturers are keen for tested ingredients that function well, meet with consumer approval and provide a gluten-free alternative.

With a firm foothold in the soup and canned goods aisle, pulse products now seem poised to enter the meat categories. While there’s no guarantee, Pietrasik’s data supports a case that processors are likely to find compelling.

“When compared to wheat flour, all pulse ingredients were on par,” Pietrasik said. “It can be used to replace wheat crumb in these applications with no detrimental effect on the consumer acceptability. This is very good news for pulse growers.”

University of Alberta professor aims to obtain oligosaccharides from pea fibre concentrate using an innovative, rapid, environment-friendly method.

Pulse fractions are increasingly being used to make food products healthier. One aspect of this can be seen in the grocery store. Another relates to the area of nutraceuticals, where a food or food ingredient provides documented health benefits for prevention or management of disease.

For patients with gastrointestinal disorders or colon cancer, oligosaccharides obtained from crop fractions have been known to provide a therapeutic benefit. Current oligosaccharide production relies on processes that are effective, but often slow or environmentally problematic.

“Common processes use enzymes to obtain oligosaccharides, but this process is costly and time-consuming,” said Marleny Saldaña, Associate Professor in Food/Bio-Engineering Processing at the University of Alberta. “The other method uses various chemicals, which are toxic.”

That got Saldaña wondering how could oligosaccharide extraction be made quicker, cheaper and greener? In 2016, with funding support from Alberta Pulse Growers and Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions, Saldaña began a four-year project to examine this question.

Saldaña starts with a pea fibre concentrate left over when manufacturers process peas to obtain protein. With Canada being the leading producer of dry field peas, and various companies now producing a growing quantity of pea fibre, Saldaña saw an opportunity to convert this polysaccharide-rich by-product into oligosaccharides.

Process builds critical knowledge to help industry grow

Over the first 18 months of the project, Saldaña has achieved significant progress in studying enrichment of the polysaccharide fraction for further oligosaccharide production extraction.

“Our approach was to use a green technology where we could ultimately get a dry form or liquid form of the oligosaccharides,” she said. “Processing this co-product here, Alberta will get a much higher value for the final product.”

For Saldaña and her team, which includes two graduate students, the next year will see deeper investigation into how to achieve higher levels of purity in the oligosaccharides. As she sees it, the role played by her students not only advances the project at hand, but also builds critical bench strength that Alberta’s industry will need in the coming years.

Between now and early 2020, Saldaña and her team will continue to refine the processing method to obtain a data set that can be shared with industry to move this faster, cheaper, greener oligosaccharide technology closer to commercialization. It could also mean a high-value market for pea growers in the future.

Saldaña is excited that the early development steps taken by her team in this value-added process are helping to build productive links between academic research, industry need and the health of society.

“By doing research here in Alberta, we can grow the economy, we can grow innovation and involve the industry to commercialize it,” she said. “This funding is so critical, because without it, we cannot build those links.”

Pulse fractions have vast potential to change the food industry, for the better. Companies are already making everything from energy bars to snack foods with the starch, protein and fibre components of crops like peas, lentils and faba bean. These products answer consumer demands for healthier food options in a powerful way.

The question is, what is the most productive, cost-effective way to obtain these high-value fractions?

University of Alberta Professor Thava Vasanthan believes he has an answer. Known as Air Currents-Assisted Particle Separation (ACAPS) technology, it was developed by Vasanthan in 2012 with cereal crop fractionation in mind.

“It works very much like a tornado, operating in a chamber,” Vasanthan said. “As with a tornado, the air is coming from a particular direction and it swirls around to lift particles higher.”

ACAPS can produce dietary fibre concentrates from barley at less cost than using conventional air classification (AC) technology. Once the dietary fibre component is separated, what’s left is a 65% starch, 32% protein concentrate. For a food processing company, the capital cost of ACAPS is another attraction. It requires an initial investment that’s far less than with AC.

Over the past year, Vasanthan has been working on his approach to using ACAPS to produce a concentrate of starch and protein from pulse crops. This project, which is being funded by Alberta Pulse Growers, runs until next spring.

Using ACAPS on faba bean

Vasanthan’s initial pulse crop subject has been faba bean. This crop is relatively higher in protein than other pulses and is currently lower in price, as well.

“We have two different types of faba bean, low-tannin and high-tannin,” Vasanthan said. “Low- tannin is good for pet food, high-tannin is good for human food. When you use ACAPS on faba bean, you can separate out the starch and the protein. You can then use AC to concentrate the protein.”

AC technology is currently being used by several companies to fractionate pulse fibres and proteins. Vasanthan’s aiming to capture a high-protein fraction with a minimum amount of fibre.

“We are developing a holistic approach to characterizing the starch, protein and fibre fractions of pulses with ACAPS,” Vasanthan said.

Food ingredient companies are looking for practical, economical ways to unlock the valuable fractions of pulse crops. Based on research to date, ACAPS appears to be a strong candidate. It’s cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate and works more efficiently than conventional air classification technology. Food ingredient companies, and pulse growers themselves, will be watching this project with interest.

“We did some preliminary work with ACAPS to take the fibre out and create a starch and protein concentrate,” Vasanthan said. “I am quite optimistic with the way it’s going so far, but we will wait and see.”

Project at a glance

Project title:                Application development for the starch/protein concentrate produced by Air Currents Assisted Particle Separation (ACAPS) Technology

Project lead:                Thava Vasanthan, University of Alberta

Total value of project: $372,000

Start date:                   April 1, 2016

Completion date:        March 31, 2018