Development of Novel Pasta Products with Evidence Based Impacts on Health—A Review

Abstract

Pasta made from durum wheat is a widely consumed worldwide and is a healthy and convenient food. In the last two decades, there has been much research effort into improving the nutritional value of pasta by inclusion of nonconventional ingredients due to the demand by health-conscious consumers for functional foods. These ingredients can affect the technological properties of the pasta, but their health impacts are not always measured rather inferred. This review provides an overview of pasta made from durum wheat where the semolina is substituted in part with a range of ingredients (barley fractions, dietary fibre sources, fish ingredients, herbs, inulin, resistant starches, legumes, vegetables and protein extracts). Impacts on pasta technological properties and in vitro measures of phytonutrient enhancement or changes to starch digestion are included. Emphasis is on the literature that provides clinical or animal trial data on the health benefits of the functional pasta.

Factors Affecting the Nutritional, Health, and Technological Quality of Durum Wheat for Pasta-Making: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In this respect, according to the author’s knowledge, this is the first time that a systematic literature review (SLR) has been performed on so many quality aspects of durum wheat. In fact, other reviews provided valuable insights on a single or small number of durum wheat quality-related topics, such as breeding history and quality [ 6 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ], human health effects of durum wheat consumption [ 27 , 28 ], enrichment of pasta with non-conventional ingredients [ 29 , 30 ], grain composition and end-use quality [ 31 , 32 ], pasta-making [ 8 , 33 , 34 ] and drying impacts [ 35 , 36 ], and durum wheat colour [ 37 , 38 ], etc. This might be interpreted as a sign of the novelty of this paper and the added value it can bring to the literature by identifying new research priorities and innovative approaches to enhance the overall quality of durum wheat for pasta production.…”

Influence of adding wild berry powders on the quality of pasta products

“…Over the past two decades, many research efforts have been made to improve the nutritional value of pasta by incorporating non-traditional ingredients through the demand of health-conscious consumers for functional foods. Considering the increase in the biological value of finished products, researchers take into account technological aspects [7].…”

Influence of Some Spaghetti Processing Variables on Technological Attributes and the In Vitro Digestion of Starch

“…Pasta products enriched with various ingredients (legumes, wholegrains, vegetables, resistant starch, etc.) have been created (for reviews see [ 4 , 5 ]) and some of these have reduced the low-moderate GI of pasta further but there is still a large variation in GI between pasta and the mechanism that underpins these differences are not well understood [ 2 ]. While the measurement of food GI is the best way to determine the glycaemic response to ingestion of a specific food, this method is expensive and resource-demanding and so in vitro methods have been developed to rank foods by predicting GI that correlates with the in vivo method [ 6 ] while also providing data on the kinetics of the starch digestion.…”