Design and Development of Functional Foods from Agri-and Marine waste for Value Addition

The project is addressing the environmental concerns attributed to the large amount of biodegradable agri-and marine waste and its by-products from food industry. Such agri- and marine resources highly valuable in foods are; whey proteins from milk and c heese production, oilseeds and rice from the plant refinery industry, krill/fish-oil and chitosan from shellfish production. All may have value addition in foods and deliver major health benefits. Whey proteins have a high nutritional value as ingredients in foods and will form bioactive peptides upon digestion. Chitosan is used to slow down digestion of foods and thereby reduce the absorption of fat/oils and decrease satiety in humans. A model digestion using human enzymes has been developed to study bio active components released by digestion and this will be used to study bioactive components released. An important factor during food digestion is to study rheological properties of the food that is ingested. In the project a functional food like orange j uice enriched with polyunsaturated fatty acids from marine and plant oil together with whey proteins and chitosan have been successfully been prepared in Pilot plant (small industrial scale). This product has showed good stability and rheological properti es. The product will be further studied for the release of bioactive components during digestion.

There is a need to exploit the total potential of bioactive components from various agri-and marine waste materials which can be in the form bioactive peptides from whey and oilseed meal proteins or antioxidant molecules from rice bran, fish and krill pro duction. These would have diverse and unique health benefits for therapeutic use. The present proposal aims at preparing and characterizing the bioactive peptides from whey, oilseed meal proteins and also isolation of antioxidant molecules from rice bran for their application in health foods. These studies would form a scientific basis for understanding the functionality of these bioactive molecules. These peptides are bioactive molecules have an enormous potential in the field of nutrition and nutrac euticals. The results of this study would lead to the development of health foods/functional foods. The work involves the major ingredients of commercial importance as sources of nutrients like whey, oilseeds and bran from rice/wheat and from fish and kr ill oil production. The approach to meet the above requirement consists of: (1) discovery and identification of the components or mixture of components in whey/oilseeds/ rice and wheat bran with the potential to deliver a major health benefit; (2) health benefit is then confirmed through appropriate animal and human trials; (3) develop functional food ingredients or dairy products aligned with consumer taste preferences.(4) To build the knowledge base necessary for developing foods from waste that delive rs environmental and health benefits and commercialization of nutrient products. In addition and most valuable, this project will lead to environmental benefits with respect turn waste into high nutritional products.