Teilprojekt 1 - Functional Food
Entwicklung von Produkten mit Zusatznutzen (Functional Food) unter Berücksichtigung besonderer lebensmitteltechnologischer Methoden
Workpackage 1:
Development of products with additional benefit (functional food) applying special food technology.
Project team: Prof. Dr. Helmut Dietrich, Prof. Dr. F. Will, Bettina Irmler, Research Center Geisenheim
Email: h.dietrich@fa-gm.de
Background
Anthocyanins are part of the widespread group of plant secondary metabolites called flavonoids. The red colorants can be found mainly in berry fruits like grapes, blueberry, currants, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, but also in vegetables like black carrots or red cabbage. In plants and humans anthocyanins act as antioxidants, so there is an increasing interest in these bioactive components and their potential health benefits. But in fact the overall intake of fruits and vegetables with high content of anthocyanins in the German population is too low. A feasible possibility to change this situation is the intake of 100% juices from berry fruits.
Aim
The aim of the project is to design and to characterise juices from berry fruits as well as from vegetables with high amount of anthocyanins/polyphenols and well-accepted sensory properties. This is done with special food technological methods (Fig. 1). These new products should be optimised by interviewing a group of children and youngsters as a sensory consumer panel to evaluate these juices according to the liking and acceptance of the young people.
Results
The grape cultivars Accent and Dakapo serve as the base for the anthocyanin- and polyphenol-rich juices. Depending on the vintage and climate conditions these varieties reach concentrations up to 3.2 g/L of anthocyanins. In most cases 20% blueberry was added to improve the sensory properties and to increase the anthocyanin concentrations. Juices, smoothies and purees were produced using different technologies. Based on the adsorber resin technique we removed anthocyanins and polyphenols from the juice again to build a polyphenol-free “placebo” used in human studies of our project partners (Work package 4, 5, 6 and 7). Additionally this technique enabled us to isolate anthocyanin and polyphenol powders containing 12-23 % anthocyanins after lyophilisation. Furthermore we produced blends of grape, blueberry, apple and black carrot juice to conduct sensory tests in Geisenheim and at the Research Institute of Child Nutrition Dortmund.