Good Food‐Processing Techniques: Stability of Mycotoxins in Processed Maize‐Based Foods

Safety of Corn and Corn-Based Products Intended for Human Consumption Concerning Fumonisins from a Brazilian Processing Plant

“…It includes the corn endosperm used for breakfast cereal production, or it can be converted to cornmeal and grits and used for cornflakes, snacks, and beer production, respectively. However, fumonisins are thermostable compounds that are not destroyed during this process and they can be detected in corn products constituting a potential hazard to human health [11].…”

Mycotoxins in maize: mitigation actions, with a chain management approach

“…Moisture content of maize grain at harvest is commonly not low enough to guarantee safe storage, so the grain must be dried before storage commences (Bullerman and Bianchini, 2014). Drying is performed using heated air dryers.…”

“…Natural compounds with fungicidal or fungistatic activity may be useful for preventing fungal growth in stored maize (Bullerman and Bianchini, 2014;Caceres et al, 2016). Different categories of plant-based compounds with bioactivity against a wide range of fungi have been identified as alternative agents, including antioxidants (Coma et al, 2011;Azaiez et al, 2013;De Lucca et al, 2013;Thippeswamy et al, 2013;Tracz et al, 2016), phenolic compounds (Ferrochio et al, 2013;Thippeswamy et al, 2015), and essential oils (Da Gloria et al, 2010;Matasyoh et al, 2011;Elsamra et al, 2012;Garcia et al, 2012;Koc and Kara, 2014;Sahab et al, 2014;Abhishek et al, 2015;Kalagatur et al, 2015;Liang et al, 2015;Achugbu et al, 2016;Kosegarten et al, 2017;Sawaiet al, 2017) (see Supplementary Table S2).…”

“…Distribution of Aspergillus and Fusarium toxins in maize products after dry-milling has been investigated in several studies, showing similar patterns of distribution. Mycotoxin contaminations increase, compared to unprocessed maize grain, in bran, germ and fractions intended for animal feed (Coradi et al, 2016), whereas they decrease in flaking grits and flour which are mainly destined to human consumption (Bullerman and Bianchini, 2014;Savi et al, 2016). The distribution of Fusarium toxins (FBs, ZEN and DON) in dry-milled maize products has been assessed, and these results indicate that average mycotoxin content in meals and grits was reduced by 65-88% compared to the unprocessed grain (Reyneri et al, 2004).…”

“…AFs have high decomposition Ts ranging from 237°C to 306°C, but all heat treatments (boiling, roasting, baking or steaming) have been reported to reduce foodstuff contamination (Jalili, 2015). Boiling maize grits reduced AF levels by 28%, while frying the boiled grits gave total reduction of 34-53% (Bullerman and Bianchini, 2014). Also, FBs are moderately stable compounds in high T, as a significant decrease in these compounds only occurs above 150-200°C, where thermal processing such as baking, frying, roasting or extruding are applied (Humpf and Voss, 2004;Mohanlall et al, 2013).…”