Development and quality evaluation of nutraceutical pasta

Abstract

Pasta by itself is a healthy nutritional diet, and has great scope as an ideal functional food if supplemented with additional health ingredients. Taking this context into consideration there is a need to develop nutraceutical pasta which explores different health ingredients that are compatible with the physiological characteristics of pasta. A study was conducted on development of nutraceutical pasta by cold extrusion technique using lab scale DOLLY equipment. The samples were made by mixing ingredients ragi, drumstick, atta, corn flour & yams. The vegetables were further blanched, dried, powdered and mixed with pulverized cereal. The extruded pasta was dried in cabinet dryer at a temperature of 65°C for 30 min. The textural analysis using a texture analyzer showed that the force required was higher for samples containing atta (for both cooked (0.7764 N) & uncooked pasta (46.37 N)). This could be due to the high strength offered by the gluten content in atta which makes stronger compared to millet based pasta (for both cooked (0.466 N) & uncooked (23.9 N)). The colour values measured by hunter lab colour flex meter showed a decrease in L* value (32.45) of ragi based pasta compared to other combinations for both cooked and uncooked samples. The percentage elongation checked with a digital vernier caliper after cooking showed a higher elongation (16.8%) for pasta containing ragi and higher thickness (96.55%) was observed for millet based pasta. The OCT and solid loss for the optimized sample was less (5.5 min & 0.82% respectively). The overall acceptability was found to be higher in the sample 5 followed by the sample 4. It is observed that swelling power is less in treatment consists of corn flour. The study concludes that developed nutraceutical pasta incorporating ragi (25%), purple yam (55%), elephant yam (5%), drumstick (5%) and atta (10%) is a good substitute for commercial pasta.