Determination of nutritional signatures of vegetable snacks formulated with quinoa, amaranth, or wheat flour

Patricia Calvo Magro; Isaac Maestro-Gaitán; María Reguera Blázquez; Javier Matías Prieto; Francisco Manuel Sánchez Iñiguez; Verónica Cruz Sobrado; María José Rodríguez Gómez

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.137370

Determination of nutritional signatures of vegetable snacks formulated with quinoa, amaranth, or wheat flour

Food Chem. 2024 Feb 1:433:137370. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.137370. Epub 2023 Sep 9.

Authors

Patricia Calvo Magro¹, Isaac Maestro-Gaitán², María Reguera Blázquez², Javier Matías Prieto³, Francisco Manuel Sánchez Iñiguez¹, Verónica Cruz Sobrado³, María José Rodríguez Gómez⁴

Affiliations

¹ Área de Vegetales. Instituto Tecnológico Agroalimentario de Extremadura, Centro de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas de Extremadura (CICYTEX), Avda. Adolfo Suárez, s/n, 06007 Badajoz, Spain.
² Departamento de Biología, Campus de Cantoblanco, c/Darwin 2, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
³ Centro de Investigación Finca La Orden-Valdesequera, Centro de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas de Extremadura (CICYTEX), Autovía Madrid-Lisboa s/n, 06187 Badajoz, Spain.
⁴ Área de Vegetales. Instituto Tecnológico Agroalimentario de Extremadura, Centro de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas de Extremadura (CICYTEX), Avda. Adolfo Suárez, s/n, 06007 Badajoz, Spain. Electronic address: mariajose.rodriguezg@juntaex.es.

PMID: 37688824
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.137370

Abstract

Consumers demand food products that can impact positively health. Those made from quinoa or amaranth flours could meet these expectations. Thus, the main goal of this work was to evaluate the nutritional composition of easy-to-eat snacks combining red pepper, carrot, or zucchini with quinoa or amaranth flours, well-recognized superfoods. In addition, these were compared with snacks incorporating wheat flour, a widely used conventional cereal. The results showed higher protein content in quinoa or amaranth snacks. The snacks with quinoa showed lower saturated fatty acid contents and the highest contents of unsaturated fatty acids. Furthermore, the discriminant model obtained could be used as a powerful predictive model to classify the samples according to the vegetable and flours used. Besides, the canonical discriminant analysis showed that the most influential grouping variable was the flour rather than the vegetable.

Keywords: Amaranth; Flour; Nutritional signatures; Quinoa; Snack classification; Wheat.