Pulse‐based snacks as functional foods: Processing challenges and biological potential

Abstract

Despite their high nutritional value and potential health benefits, pulse intake has not increased in the last three decades. Several strategies have been implemented to increase pulse consumption, such as their incorporation in bakery products, breakfast cereals, and snacks. The inclusion of pulses in these products could be an alternative to satisfy the consumers' demand for healthy foods. However, pulse-based snacks face important challenges, including reducing antinutritional factors, achieving consumer acceptance, and consolidating the pulse-based snacks as functional foods. This review summarizes and discusses methods for producing snacks where cereals or tubers were replaced with at least 50% pulses. Also, it briefly assesses their effect on nutritional composition, antinutritional factors, sensory acceptance, and different health benefits evaluations. Extruded snacks exhibited high protein and dietary fiber and low fat content, contrary to the high fat content of deep fat-fried snacks. Meanwhile, baked snacks presented moderate concentrations of protein, dietary fiber, and lipids. Pulses must be pretreated using process combinations such as soaking, dehulling, cooking, fermentation, germination, and extrusion to reduce the antinutritional factors. Pulse-based snacks show good sensory acceptance. However, sensory evaluation should be more rigorous using additional untrained judges. Several studies have evaluated the health benefits of pulse-based snacks.More research is needed to validate scientifically the health benefits associated with their consumption. Pulse-based snacks could be an alternative to improve the nutritional composition of commercially available snacks. The use of pulses as ingredients of healthier snacks represents an important alternative for the food industry due to their low cost, sensory characteristics, high nutritional profile, and environmental benefits.

Sensory Characteristics and Nutritional Quality of Food Products Made with a Biofortified and Lectin Free Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Flour

“…Furthermore, data on the sensorial characteristics of these products provided indications to better identify target consumers as well as to develop bean-based products better adapted to consumer needs. From a nutritional standpoint, the use of composite flours containing common bean flour led, as expected and reported in similar studies [7,12,15,63,64], to products with higher protein and total dietary fiber content and lower amounts of starch and total carbohydrates. Depending on the type of pulse-based snacks (e.g., bars, biscuits, chips, bread, extruded snacks) reported protein concentration has ranged between 8.79% and 29.8%, with extruded snacks having the highest protein content, as they mostly or exclusively contain legume flour [7,64].…”

“…From a nutritional standpoint, the use of composite flours containing common bean flour led, as expected and reported in similar studies [7,12,15,63,64], to products with higher protein and total dietary fiber content and lower amounts of starch and total carbohydrates. Depending on the type of pulse-based snacks (e.g., bars, biscuits, chips, bread, extruded snacks) reported protein concentration has ranged between 8.79% and 29.8%, with extruded snacks having the highest protein content, as they mostly or exclusively contain legume flour [7,64]. The direct comparison between the two types of biscuits produced in the current study with other bean-based biscuits previously described [12,15] showed that the protein content of Biscuit 1 and Biscuit 2 was higher (by on average 11%) than that (ranging between 8% and 10%) reported for biscuits containing bean flour ranging from 12% to 29%, indicating that the composition of the composite flour is also important if other flours beside common bean and wheat are used.…”

“…If an increase in protein and total dietary fiber and a decrease in starch contents in the bean-based products could be expected, the major element of novelty of the present study relates to the fact that the bean-based products were obtained using flours of biofortified and low antinutrient (lpa lec − ) bean genotypes. Common approaches to increase essential mineral bioavailability and to reduce antinutrients are mainly based on a combination of technological processing, such as soaking, dehulling, heating, cooking, fermentation, germination and extrusion [7]. These treatments, although necessary to reduce or eliminate the antinutrients, are costly and time consuming and may reduce the nutritional quality of the product (e.g., loss of minerals in brine).…”

“…Furthermore, innovative food alternatives that promote legume consumption and that can provide alternatives to satisfy consumer demand for healthy foods have emerged. These novel foods incorporate legumes into bakery products, pasta, soups, cereals, tortillas, meat substitutes, beverages, and snacks (recently reviewed by [7]).…”

Common Bean Baked Snack Consumption Reduces Apolipoprotein B-100 Levels: A Randomized Crossover Trial

“…Then, the common bean baked snacks were individually packaged in resealable bags and stored at room temperature. In recent years, snack alternatives based on common beans have been developed to promote pulse consumption [8]. Meanwhile, consumers are changing their food preferences, choosing certain food products to obtain health benefits, and pulse-based snacks could satisfy this growing demand [9].…”