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Stinging Nettles as Potential Food Additive: Effect of Drying Processes on Quality Characteristics of Leaf Powders
Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica L.) is a ubiquitous, multi-utility, and under-utilized crop with potential health benefits owing to its nutritional and bioactive components. The objective of the work is to produce powders by drying wild stinging nettle leaves as a storable, low-cost functional additi...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8224096/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34063844 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/foods10061152 |
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author | Nallan Chakravartula, Swathi Sirisha Moscetti, Roberto Farinon, Barbara Vinciguerra, Vittorio Merendino, Nicolò Bedini, Giacomo Neri, Lilia Pittia, Paola Massantini, Riccardo |
author_facet | Nallan Chakravartula, Swathi Sirisha Moscetti, Roberto Farinon, Barbara Vinciguerra, Vittorio Merendino, Nicolò Bedini, Giacomo Neri, Lilia Pittia, Paola Massantini, Riccardo |
author_sort | Nallan Chakravartula, Swathi Sirisha |
collection | PubMed |
description | Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica L.) is a ubiquitous, multi-utility, and under-utilized crop with potential health benefits owing to its nutritional and bioactive components. The objective of the work is to produce powders by drying wild stinging nettle leaves as a storable, low-cost functional additive to be used in bakery and ready-to-cook products. Convective drying (CD) and freeze-drying (FD) were applied on unblanched (U) or blanched (B) leaves, which were then milled to nettle powders (NPs). The obtained NPs were evaluated for selected physicochemical (moisture, color), techno-functional (flow indices, hygroscopicity), and phytochemical (pigments, phenols) characteristics as well as mineral contents. Blanching improved mass transfer and reduced the oxidative degradation of pigments during drying, but it caused a loss of total phenols content, antioxidant activity, and potassium content. As for the drying method, CD resulted in better flow properties (i.e., Carr Index and Hausner Ratio), while FD retained better the color, pigments, magnesium content, phenolic, and antioxidant parameters. Overall, the evaluated processing methods resulted in different technological properties that can allow for better evaluation of NPs as a food additive or ingredient. Among the NPs, blanched and freeze-dried powders despite showing inferior technological properties can be recommended as more suitable ingredients targeted f or food enrichment owing to better retention of bio-active components. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8224096 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82240962021-06-25 Stinging Nettles as Potential Food Additive: Effect of Drying Processes on Quality Characteristics of Leaf Powders Nallan Chakravartula, Swathi Sirisha Moscetti, Roberto Farinon, Barbara Vinciguerra, Vittorio Merendino, Nicolò Bedini, Giacomo Neri, Lilia Pittia, Paola Massantini, Riccardo Foods Article Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica L.) is a ubiquitous, multi-utility, and under-utilized crop with potential health benefits owing to its nutritional and bioactive components. The objective of the work is to produce powders by drying wild stinging nettle leaves as a storable, low-cost functional additive to be used in bakery and ready-to-cook products. Convective drying (CD) and freeze-drying (FD) were applied on unblanched (U) or blanched (B) leaves, which were then milled to nettle powders (NPs). The obtained NPs were evaluated for selected physicochemical (moisture, color), techno-functional (flow indices, hygroscopicity), and phytochemical (pigments, phenols) characteristics as well as mineral contents. Blanching improved mass transfer and reduced the oxidative degradation of pigments during drying, but it caused a loss of total phenols content, antioxidant activity, and potassium content. As for the drying method, CD resulted in better flow properties (i.e., Carr Index and Hausner Ratio), while FD retained better the color, pigments, magnesium content, phenolic, and antioxidant parameters. Overall, the evaluated processing methods resulted in different technological properties that can allow for better evaluation of NPs as a food additive or ingredient. Among the NPs, blanched and freeze-dried powders despite showing inferior technological properties can be recommended as more suitable ingredients targeted f or food enrichment owing to better retention of bio-active components. MDPI 2021-05-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8224096/ /pubmed/34063844 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/foods10061152 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Nallan Chakravartula, Swathi Sirisha Moscetti, Roberto Farinon, Barbara Vinciguerra, Vittorio Merendino, Nicolò Bedini, Giacomo Neri, Lilia Pittia, Paola Massantini, Riccardo Stinging Nettles as Potential Food Additive: Effect of Drying Processes on Quality Characteristics of Leaf Powders |
title | Stinging Nettles as Potential Food Additive: Effect of Drying Processes on Quality Characteristics of Leaf Powders |
title_full | Stinging Nettles as Potential Food Additive: Effect of Drying Processes on Quality Characteristics of Leaf Powders |
title_fullStr | Stinging Nettles as Potential Food Additive: Effect of Drying Processes on Quality Characteristics of Leaf Powders |
title_full_unstemmed | Stinging Nettles as Potential Food Additive: Effect of Drying Processes on Quality Characteristics of Leaf Powders |
title_short | Stinging Nettles as Potential Food Additive: Effect of Drying Processes on Quality Characteristics of Leaf Powders |
title_sort | stinging nettles as potential food additive: effect of drying processes on quality characteristics of leaf powders |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8224096/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34063844 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/foods10061152 |
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