Progress 09/01/20 to 04/30/21

Outputs
Target Audience:The market opportunity for functional food products, made with natural, agricultural ingredients is in high demand and rapidly growing. Consumers are seeking plant-based foods that provide health-promoting benefits, and that do not contain artificial or undesirable ingredients or attributes. In 2015, according to a Nielsen's global survey, more than half (57%) of consumers in the world are expanding diets to include more natural and fresh foods. Of these global consumers, 40% are searching for foods made from fruits and vegetables with more than 30% rating foods high in fiber (36%) and protein (32%) as important. These same trends reveal that they also highly are seeking for foods fortified with vitamins (30%) or minerals (29%) to fulfill their nutritional needs. The focus on health-promoting foods is also driving demand and opportunity for protein-rich and polyphenol-containing ingredients. Up to 80% of consumers are actively using foods as medicine to address health issues and conditions such as obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension. As all of these growing trends continue to evolve, manufacturers are exploring innovative ways to incorporate functional ingredients to create products that incorporate fruits and vegetables and their nutritional and health-promoting benefits into formulations. Specifically, convenient and protein-rich snack foods is a growing category. The specialty foods market reached total sales of $94B in 2015 with the snacks category these protein products falls under accounting for 26.8% of industry revenue. Consumers spent $374 billion on snack foods between 2013 -2014 with 76% of consumers in the world snacking often and 45% snacking as a meal replacement. Protein ingredients alone are anticipated to grow from $48.8 billion to $70.7 billion between 2019 to 2025 with the increased consumer awareness of health and wellness through functional foods. Given these trends, in tandem with industry lack of waste stream use, we anticipate significant potential for our innovative processing technologies. Furthermore, SinnovaTek is in the process of bringing this technology to a manufacturer in Kenya who is looking to provide a natural source of Vitamin A, utilizing locally-harvested crops such as mango, with limited shelf stability, and sweet potato along with local protein sources to address a critical Vitamin A deficiency issue and under-consumption of protein within the local population through a shelf stable and nutrient dense product. Changes/Problems:Based on our project proposal we intended to utilize purple muscadine pomace for this study. However, we faced unexpected pumping issues during purple muscadine pomace extraction (character of pomace/water blend) which resulted in the lack of enough resources required for the preparation of the protein-polyphenol ingredient. We were able to pivot and source freshly harvested and pressed bronze muscadine pomace from a local grower/processor instead (Duplin Winery, Rose Hill, NC). Generally, more white muscadine grapes are grown locally (~80%) than purple varieties, and white muscadine grape varieties are loaded with polyphenols just as their purple siblings. In addition, this gave us the option to evaluate a protein-polyphenol ingredient that is not colored (by fruit/berry naturally occurring pigments), since for some food products created a color neutral ingredient would be preferred. Further, to avoid similar processing issues with the white muscadine pomace, we decided to add in a gentle enzymatic treatment step to make the water/pomace blend pumpable/processable. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Dr. Roberta Hoskin, working on this project spent a full day learning about microwave-assisted extraction and participating in the preparation of the polyphenol-rich extract from blueberry pomace (education & training). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?This phase I work is in preparation for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Proposed Title: Production of Spray Dried Protein-Polyphenol Ingredients Using Recovered Phytoactive Compounds From Fruit Pomaces and Microwave-Assisted Technology Proposed Journal: Food Research International What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We successfully accomplished all of the technical objectives proposed for Phase I and have established technical feasibility of our technology and its commercialization potential. Below is a list of key takeaways: Technical Objective 1 & 2: We successfully generated concentrated extracts using continuous microwave-assisted water extraction, from bronze muscadine grape and wild blueberry pomaces and prepared all protein-polyphenol aggregate ingredients. We observed poor heating (unfavorable dielectrics) of chickpea ingredients using microwave-assisted sterilization which led to the exclusion of these specific samples from further analysis. Microwave sterilization of chickpea protein will not be further investigated. Technical Objective 3: None of the tested heat treatments (spray drying, microwave-assisted pasteurization, and microwave-assisted sterilization) resulted in the degradation of total phenolic compounds in the protein-polyphenol ingredients. In some cases, heat treatment of the ingredients resulted in an increase of detectable polyphenolic compounds in the ingredients when compared with the respective controls (ingredient that was not heat treated). We believe that this increase is associated with the breakdown of larger phenolic compounds into smaller metabolites, which may confer higher bioavailability. The starting total phenolic content of the extracts used dictates the possible polyphenol load in protein-polyphenol ingredients. Similarly, since extracts contain different proanthocyanidins at different sizes (degree of polymerization), these compounds were found in protein-polyphenol ingredients. Enzyme-treatment of a pomace can have an impact on size/types of proanthocyanidins present in the resulting extract and therefore in the finished protein-polyphenol ingredients. Some expected anthocyanin, but not proanthocyanidin, degradation was observed in heat-treated ingredients. Table 1 highlights a summary of the ingredient functionality results and discusses conclusions drawn for their use in different food applications. Table 1. Summary of ingredient functionality results and food application notes. Ingredient Solubility % Application Notes / Recommendations pH 4 pH 7 CH 40 50 Spray dried ingredients best suitable for medium / high viscosity beverage/smoothie type applications, especially for neutral pH beverages. Not suitable for clear protein beverages. MP or MS ingredients (liquid format) may be suitable for high viscosity smoothies with or without stabilizers/maskers. CH SD ingredients 30-35 45-55 PR 40 55 PR SD ingredients 35-40 55-60 CH or PR - MP or MS ingredients 15-27 25-35 Foaming Capacity % pH 4 pH 7 CH 230 200 Overall - all ingredients likely not suitable for food foam applications, but data suggests some pH and protein/polyphenol source dependence that should be further explored on a case by case application basis. CH ingredients 40-60 45-60 PR 20 240 PR ingredients 45-80 45-95 Foam Stability % pH 4 pH 7 CH 150 30 CH ingredients 10-50 10-20 PR 20 120 PR ingredients 13-38 23-62 Emulsification Index g/m2 pH 4 pH 7 CH 80 80 Overall- ingredients showed enhanced emulsification/emulsion stability properties compared to proteins alone. Potential use in a variety of food products. Properties depend on pH and protein/polyphenol source. CH ingredients 35-70 78-82 PR 68 70 PR ingredients 20-75 45-78 Emulsion Stability % pH 4 pH7 CH 17 55 CH ingredients 17-30 40-62 PR 20 50 PR ingredients 17-95 40-55 Least Gelation Concentration % CH 15 Complexation of proteins with polyphenols resulted in decreased gelation capacity (less or no protein-protein interactions). Ingredients (including MP and MS treated) suitable to be further investigated/applied to protein nutrition bars and gummy candy. Mitigation of bar hardening or gummy hardening over shelf life. CH SD ingredients 20 PR 25 CH PR ingredients 28 Legend: CH, Chickpea protein; PR, Pea/Rice blend; ingredients, protein-polyphenol complex ingredients; MS, microwave sterilization; MP, microwave pasteurization In vitro digestion results indicate that polyphenols bound in the protein matrices are very bioaccessible, especially from blueberry (>60%) (that is, quantity of polyphenols that are released from the protein matrix in the gastrointestinal tract, becoming available for absorption into the bloodstream). A clinical study in a Phase II SBIR will be performed to demonstrate the ability of VITEROTM to attenuate exercise-induced inflammatory and oxidative stress, and also to demonstrate enhanced bioavailability of polyphenolic compounds from the ingredients in circulation. Technical Objective 4: Based on the sensory panel remarks, the beverages produced with blueberry and chickpea combinations received the most desirable sensory scores. On the other hand, the beverages produced with muscadine grape presented noticeable astringency and, according to the sensory panel, this might result in undesirable sensory perception. The panel suggested that more sour fruit ingredients such as pineapple, citrus or pomegranate would better compliment the natural flavor profile of the muscadine grape-derived protein-polyphenol ingredients.

Publications