Publication:

Cooked pasta retains up to 80% of added b-vitamins

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    Authors & editors

    Publisher Milling & Grain
    Year of publication 2016 July
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    Medium Digital
    Edition1
    Topics

    Nutrition & health

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    Scope & contentIn many countries, pasta products are made with flour that has been fortified to improve its nutritional value. But during manufacturing, drying Iand cooking, sensitive vitamins such as riboflavin, thiamine, niacin and folic acid are lost. In the specialist literature, vitamin B losses through cooking of over 90 percent are mentioned. In order to gain more background knowledge of the subject, Mühlenchemie has done its own stability tests in its new pasta laboratory. According to this study, between 40 and 80 percent of added B-vitamins are retained in the cooked pasta.

    In over 80 countries flour is fortified with vitamins and minerals to protect consumers from nutritional deficiencies. While some micronutrients show high stability during processing, water-soluble B-vitamins can react very sensitively to outside influences.

    This sensitivity causes them to degrade in pasta products in particular. High cooking temperatures and UV light exposure lead to losses of micronutrients and so reduced nutritional value.

    Micronutrients are lost to some extent in manufacture and drying as well. These losses are usually taken into consideration when defining the amount of fortification or setting standards, whereas the effect of the cooking process is not considered in the calculation since preparation differs from one household to another. Thus, the target fortification values always refer to the dried product, although for the consumer the only thing that matters is the vitamins remaining after preparation.

    Read more about:
    Realistic test series in the new pasta laboratory
    Vitamin loss in manufacturing, storage and preparation
    High riboflavin losses during storage
    Compensating cooking losses through higher vitamin enrichment

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