Development and Evaluation of Functional Food Pasta

Pasta, which dates back to first century BC (Aguesi, 1996), is one of the most common foods preferred worldwide by the consumers for its usefulness, ease of transportation, handling, cooking, storage properties, availability in numerous shapes and sizes, high digestibility, good nutritional qualities and relative low cost. The perception of pasta consumption is changing. Once thought of as unhealthy, carbohydrate-rich and starchy, past is now considered as an excellent low-fat protein source that is convenient and nutritional (Giese, 1992). While traditional pasta is a food manufactured from only durum semolina, it can be developed using non-durum ingredients with known functionalities as a functional food. It is practicable to incorporate dietary fibre ingredients into pasta which may increase its nutritional value to the consumer compared to conventional pasta as well as having beneficial effects on post-prandial blood glucose, insulin and fasting plasma cholesterol (Brennan and Clearly, 2005; Brennan et al., 2004). The ingredients used to prepare pasta in this work are pollard (durum wheat germ), inulin, guar gum, and carboxymethylcellulose (CMC).