Algae for Innovative and Healthy Kids Pasta

Balanced infant nutrition is essential for a good physical and intellectual development. The importance of nutrition in preventing nutritional deficiencies requires the search for new food ingredients of natural origin that promotes health and enriches the diet with vitamins, mineral elements, fibre, and polyunsaturated fatty acids of sustainable sources. Micro and macro algae are a good source of protein, fibre and minerals, amongst other nutrients that enrich any diet. However, products supplemented with such ingredients are still hard to find in western culture.

Pasta is a nutritious option suitable for the incorporation of such ingredients since it is a staple food in many countries and it is consumed daily by millions of people due to its adaptability to different recipes from different cultures. Apart from this, pasta presents itself as a product of good nutritional quality for the general consumer’s needs, mostly because of its starchy content.

In this work, we present an innovative formula of dry pasta containing macro and micro algae and field crops such as beets or spinach.

After developing the algae-enriched products, a sensory analysis was performed to find the best formulation and then, nutrients and vitamins were assessed. The developed Kids Pasta is tricoloured, composed of 3 different formulations containing a unique blend in each of them, of rich ingredients. The pasta provided high mineral and vitamin contents, so that could bear nutritional claims: vitamin B12 (17,77±13,5µg/kg), vitamin B3 (5,28±5,59mg/kg), phosphorus (1008,42±7,45mg/kg), iron (4,87±0,16mg/kg), iodine (0,16±1,33E-04mg/kg), potassium (456,65±7,19mg/kg), magnesium (73,64±3,26mg/kg) and zinc (2,69±0,13mg/kg) [1][2].

The addition of algae as base ingredient, also allowed to obtain 9.34 g of protein/100g pasta. Furthermore, the consumer acceptance to different sensory attributes was tested. Appearance, colour, texture, odour, taste, and overall acceptance were evaluated using a 9-point hedonic scale with extremes ranging from “really disliked” to “really liked”. Besides the nutritional potential, the developed pasta also showed great overall sensorial acceptance, at 75% above 7 on the scale. Also, purchase intent prevailed in score 9.

[1] Regulation (EC) N◦ 1924/2006 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTE AND OF THE COUNCIL of 20 December 2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods.

[2] Regulation (EU) N◦ 1169/2011 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 25 October 2011 on the provision of food information to consumers.

Acknowledgements:

Authors are grateful to FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) for the financial support attributed to MARE – Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Polytechnic of Leiria (UIDB/04292/2020 and UIDP/04292/2020) and the project LA/P/0069/2020 granted to the Associate Laboratory ARNET. This work was financially supported by project HP4A - HEALTHY PASTA FOR ALL (co-promotion no. 039952), co-funded by ERDF - European Regional Development Fund, under the Portugal 2020 Regional Development Fund, under the Portugal 2020 Programme, through COMPETE 2020 - Competitiveness and Competitiveness and Internationalisation Operational Programme.