Assessment of bioactive compounds and their in vitro bioaccessibility in whole-wheat flour pasta
Introduction
In the last decades, there has been a growing interest in enhancing the quality and nutritional value of foods to achieve the maximum benefits of the diet. In this context, the nature of the ingredients from which food is made, the different processing stages as well as the effect of cooking on the conservation of food nutrients and bioactive compounds are of great relevance.
Being distributed and consumed worldwide, pasta is an important component of the daily diet, because it can be made from different cereals, and fortified with different nutrients, bringing reasonable nutritional advantages to different populations (Yadav & Gupta, 2015).
Among the bioactive compounds that are important to be evaluated in food, polyphenols stand out. These compounds have shown beneficial effects on human health due to their proposed antioxidant action. However, recent studies have shown that technological processes can affect both the profile and the antioxidant properties of polyphenols contained in food (Verardo et al., 2011, Fares et al., 2008, Fares et al., 2010, Zielinski et al., 2001, Li et al., 2015, Yu and Beta, 2015, Lu et al., 2014, Gélinas and McKinnon, 2006). Moreover, some processes can decrease the polyphenol content (Fares et al., 2008), while others increase it, due to a greater availability of these bioactive compounds in food (Fares et al., 2010, Zielinski et al., 2001, Yu and Beta, 2015, Lu et al., 2014, Gélinas and McKinnon, 2006). Thus, the study of changes in the polyphenol profile, as a consequence of food technology, is important to understand the changes observed in the antioxidant properties, contributing to the development of processing methods that help to maintain or increase the antioxidant capacity of foods.
In the same context, polyphenols must be bioavailable to perform their antioxidant action (Manach, Williamson, Morand, Scalbert, & Rémésy, 2005). The most abundant polyphenols are not always the main bioactive compounds in the organism. Low bioactivity can be associated with a lower intrinsic activity, low absorption in the intestine, quick metabolism, or rapid excretion (Manach, Scalbert, Morand, Rémésy, & Jiménez, 2004). Some polyphenols are relatively poorly absorbed in the intestine (their absorption ranges from 0.3% to 43%), so the concentration of their metabolites in plasma may be very low (Manach et al., 2005). Non-absorbed polyphenols, mainly those that form esters, glycosides or polymers, can reach the colon, where they can be fermented by the colonic microflora, generating metabolites which are colon-absorbed, appearing as conjugated derivatives in the plasma, and being further distributed to organs and tissues (D’Archivio, Filesi, Varì, Scazzocchio, & Masella, 2010). Once polyphenols are absorbed and metabolized, they may return to the duodenum through the enterohepatic circulation, prolonging their presence in the organism, or they can be eliminated by urine (Manach et al., 2004).
Many factors may influence the bioavailability of a compound, including its bioaccessibility, absorption, distribution in tissues, and bioactivity (Mateo Anson et al., 2009, Domínguez-Avila et al., 2017). Thus, the first step to understand the bioavailability is to study the bioaccessibility. The bioaccessibility is the fraction of a compound that is released from the food matrix in the gastrointestinal lumen, and is thus available to be absorbed into the gastrointestinal tract (Saura-Calixto, Serrano, & Goñi, 2007). This absorption may be influenced by the chemical form and the solubility of the compound, the interaction with other food ingredients (food matrix), molecular transformations, different cellular transports, metabolism, and the interaction with the intestinal microbiota (Neilson & Ferruzzi, 2011). Only those polyphenols released from the food matrix by the action of digestive enzymes and the bacterial microflora (large intestine) are bioaccessible in the intestine, and therefore, potentially bioavailable to exert their effect (bioactivity) on the human organism.
Few reports have shown the bioaccessibility of antioxidant compounds in products made from wheat flour (Gawlik-Dziki et al., 2009, Mateo Anson et al., 2010). Some authors have found that digestion can increase the antioxidant capacity of cereals with respect to extracts of these cereals (Liyana-Pathirana and Shahidi, 2005, Nagah and Seal, 2005, Pérez-Jiménez and Saura-Calixto, 2005). Therefore, digestion appears to be an important factor to enhance the antioxidant capacity of cereals. These results are particularly important, since they suggest that antioxidants exert their effect on the digestive tract, providing an environment that protects the intestinal epithelium from pro-oxidant compounds.
Thus, the main goal of this study was to verify the effective antioxidant properties of whole-wheat pasta, evaluating changes in the polyphenol profile and antioxidant properties throughout the production, cooking and digestions steps. Thus, we looked to verify which of these antioxidant compounds was degraded during the cooking process, leading to changes in the effective antioxidant properties as a consequence of cooking. Additionally, we also evaluated the bioaccessibility of polyphenols arising from cooked whole-wheat pasta by an in vitro digestion model, including a final dialysis step to simulate intestinal absorption. We hypothesize that the polyphenol profile present in whole wheat will be modified by the pasta production, cooking and digestion, leading to a reduced effective antioxidant capacity compared to the starting materials, which must be considered in the dietary information.
Section snippets
Standards and reagents
Ultra-pure water (<18 MΩ·cm, <5 μg L−1 TOC) was obtained from a purification system Arium 61316-RO plus Arium 611 UV (Sartorius, Germany). Folin-Ciocalteu reagent, ABTS (2,2′-azino-bis-(3-thylbenzothiazolne-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt), TTPZ (2,4,6-tripyridyl-S-triazine) and Trolox (6-hydroxy-2,5,7,8-tetramethyl-chroman-2-carboxylic acid) were obtained from Sigma Aldrich (Switzerland). Methanol (HPLC grade) and formic acid (puriss. p.a. for mass spectroscopy) were provided by J. T. Baker
Determination of polyphenols
Table 1, Table 2 show the content of total polyphenols (TP) and quantified polyphenolic compounds, in both the free fraction (FF) and the bound fraction (BF) of whole-wheat flour, raw whole-wheat pasta and cooked whole-wheat pasta extracts. Table 1 shows the results obtained for the ACA 315 variety, while Table 2 shows those obtained for BIOINTA 3004.
The elaboration of raw pasta didn’t show a significant change of TP in the FF between the raw pasta and the whole-wheat flour samples. However, a
Conclusion
Our current results show that the wheat processing to produce pasta induces changes in the polyphenol profile as well as in the AC from the flour to the cooked pasta. These changes are beneficial for the human health, because the cooking step improves the availability of polyphenolic compounds, particularly those derived from ferulic acid (bound polyphenols), generating an increase in the antioxidant properties of cooked pasta.
Conversely, the evaluation of the bioaccessibility of polyphenols
Funding source
This work was mainly supported by CONICET [PIP number 11220110101051, 2012–2014]; FONCYT [PICT 2008-05054, 2010–2013]; and SECYT, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba [2012–2013].
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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