Use of High-Protein and High-Dietary-Fibre Vegetable Processing Waste from Bell Pepper and Tomato for Pasta Fortification.

There is worldwide wastage of 1.3 billion tons of food annually. It is recommended that food waste should be reduced at every phase of production. By-products from food processing have high nutritional value so their use in new products is advisable. The aim of the study was to enrich the nutritional value of pasta using waste from the food industry. By-products from tomato processing (tomato waste-TW) and pepper (defatted pepper seeds-DPS, pepper placenta-PP) were used at a level of 10-30% to produce pasta. The farinographic characteristics, chemical composition, cooking quality, and colour of the pasta were studied. The results show a significant (p < 0.05), up to 27%, increase in the protein content of the TW30 samples, compared with the control (16.16% d.m. vs. 20.61% d.m.). The TDF content increased over five times in DPS30 and TW30 (27.99% d.m. and 25.44% d.m.). The amino acid composition of the pasta improved with the fortification but failed to achieve complete protein by FAO. The DPS30, PP20, PP30 and all TW samples can be considered high-protein products according to the EU definition (a minimum of 20% energy from protein). Vegetable waste can be a valuable additive for the improvement of the nutritional value of food.

Quality and Sensory Profile of Durum Wheat Pasta Enriched with Carrot Waste Encapsulates.

Consumer knowledge about pasta quality differs around the world. Modern consumers are more sophisticated compared to past times, due to the availability of information on pasta types and quality. Therefore, this study investigated the nutritional, physical, textural, and morphological quality of durum wheat pasta enriched with carrot waste encapsulates (10 and 20% freeze-dried encapsulate (FDE) and 10 and 20% spray-dried encapsulate (SDE)), as well as determining consumer preferences for this type of product. Replacement of semolina with FDE and SDE contributed to changes in the pasta nutritional quality, which was reflected in the increased protein, fat, and ash content. Additionally, changes in cooking quality, color, and texture were within satisfactory limits. The uncooked pasta enriched with 10 and 20% SDE was characterized by a lighter yellow intensity with color saturation, as well as an imperceptible waxy appearance compared to the control and enriched pasta with 10 and 20% FDE. After cooking, the yellow color was more intense in all the enriched pasta samples which can be linked to the raw cereal which was significantly greater in the control in comparison to the FDE and SDE containing samples. Overall, carrot waste can be a promising material for the food industry to produce high-quality pasta.

Mass spectrometry-based electronic nose to authenticate 100% Italian durum wheat pasta and characterization of volatile compounds.

Headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled with mass spectrometry-based electronic nose (MS-eNose), in combination with multivariate statistical analysis was used as untargeted method for the rapid authentication of 100% Italian durum wheat pasta. Among the tested classification models, i.e. PCA-LDA, PLS-DA and SVMc, SVMc provided the highest accuracy results in both calibration (90%) and validation (92%) processes. Potential markers discriminating pasta samples were identified by HS-SPME/GC-MS analysis. Specifically, the content of a pattern of 8 out of 59 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) was significantly different between samples of 100% Italian durum wheat pasta and pasta produced with durum wheat of different origins, most of which were related to different lipidic oxidation in the two classes of pasta. The proposed MS-eNose method is a rapid and reliable tool to be used for authenticating Italian pasta useful to promote its typicity and preserving consumers from fraudulent practices.

A simple design for the validation of a FT-NIR screening method: Application to the detection of durum wheat pasta adulteration.

The demand for the development of fast, easy-to-use and low-cost analytical methods for food adulteration analysis has being increasing in the last years. Although infrared spectroscopic techniques offer these advantages, the validation of screening methods requiring the application of multivariate data treatment is less frequently described in literature thus limiting their use as routine tools in control laboratories for food fraud monitoring. In this paper, an EU-validation procedure for screening methods was successfully applied to a multivariate FT-NIR spectroscopic method for the screening of durum wheat pasta samples adulterated with common wheat at the screening target concentration of 3%. Good results in terms of the cut-off value (2.32% mass fraction of soft wheat) and false suspect rates (0.1% for blanks; 13% at 1% mass fraction) demonstrated that the present validation approach would be a proof-of-strategy to be used for multivariate infrared methods applied for screening purposes.

Rapid Authentication of 100% Italian Durum Wheat Pasta by FT-NIR Spectroscopy Combined with Chemometric Tools.

Italy is the country with the largest durum wheat pasta production and consumption. The mandatory labelling for pasta indicating the country of origin of wheat has made consumers more aware about the consumed pasta products and is influencing their choice towards 100% Italian wheat pasta. This aspect highlights the need to promote the use of domestic wheat as well as to develop rapid methodologies for the authentication of pasta. A rapid, inexpensive, and easy-to-use method based on infrared spectroscopy was developed and validated for authenticating pasta made with 100% Italian durum wheat. The study was conducted on pasta marketed in Italy and made with durum wheat cultivated in Italy (n = 176 samples) and on pasta made with mixtures of wheat cultivated in Italy and/or abroad (n = 185 samples). Pasta samples were analyzed by Fourier transform-near infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy coupled with supervised classification models. The good performance results of the validation set (sensitivity of 95%, specificity and accuracy of 94%) obtained using principal component-linear discriminant analysis (PC-LDA) clearly demonstrated the high prediction capability of this method and its suitability for authenticating 100% Italian durum wheat pasta. This output is of great interest for both producers of Italian pasta pointing toward authentication purposes of their products and consumer associations aimed to preserve and promote the typicity of Italian products.

Multi-Mycotoxin Analysis in Durum Wheat Pasta by Liquid Chromatography Coupled to Quadrupole Orbitrap Mass Spectrometry.

A simple and rapid multi-mycotoxin method for the determination of 17 mycotoxins  simultaneously  is  described  in  the  present  survey  on  durum  and  soft  wheat  pasta  samples.  Mycotoxins included in the study were those mainly reported in cereal samples: ochratoxin-A  (OTA), aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), zearalenone (ZON), deoxynivalenol (DON), 3-and 15-acetyl-deoxynivalenol  (3-AcDON and 15-AcDON), nivalenol (NIV), neosolaniol (NEO), fusarenon-X, (FUS-X), T-2 toxin  (T-2) and HT-2 toxin (HT-2), fumonisin B1 and B2 (FB1 and FB2), and four emerging mycotoxins:  three  enniatins  (ENA,  ENA1,  and  ENB),  and  beauvericin  (BEA).  Twenty-nine  samples  were  analyzed to provide an overview on mycotoxin presence: 27 samples of durum wheat pasta, and  two samples of baby food. Analytical results concluded that trichothecenes showed the highest  incidence, mainly DON, NIV, and HT-2 toxin, followed by ZON and ENB, while NEO, FUS-X, OTA,  AFB1, and FUM were not detected in any sample. The highest contents corresponded to ENB and  ranged from 91.15µg/kg to 710.90 µg/kg.