Ready‐to‐eat snack products: the role of extrusion technology in developing consumer acceptable and nutritious snacks

Abstract

Consumer appeal for ready-to-eat (RTE) products is forecast to grow rapidly over the next 5 years as consumers demand convenient snacks with exciting sensory and textural properties. Extrusion technology has been used extensively in the production of cereal RTE snacks due to its ease of operation and ability to produce a variety of textures and shapes which appeal to consumers. Many of the existing RTE products are relatively high in sugar and salt, thus being regarded as energy dense but nutritionally poor foods. However, there exists a potential to manipulate the nutritional status of extruded RTEs by altering the digestion potentials of starch and protein, and by the incorporation of bioactive components such as dietary fibre. The review article explores some of the recent research in this field and illustrates opportunities by which the global food industry could react to consumers' requirements for healthful RTE snack products in the coming years.

Stability and Functionality of Grape Pomace Used as a Nutritive Additive During Extrusion Process

“…The TPC was determined by modified Folin-Ciocalteu assay in a 96-well plate format [34]. Briefly, 200 µl of the extracts were mixed with 12.5 µl of Folin-Ciocalteu reagent and then 37.5 µl 20% Na 2 CO 3 in a 96-well legumes, fruits, and vegetables [23]. Studies on the incorporation of pomace into extruded products showed that increased pomace levels beyond a certain level had negative effect on the expansion quality [16,17,20,27,28].…”

“…Extrusion of GP with white sorghum (at ratio of 30:70 w/w, barrel temperature of 170°C and screw speed of 200 rpm) with a moisture content of 45% resulted in 120% increase in monomer contents of the polyphenolics in GP extrudates [20]. All these suggest that extruded products can serve as a great vehicle for the delivery of beneficial nutrients of the GP, as extrusion is a high shear, high pressure, and short time processing technology [21], proven to help improve digestibility and nutrient bioavailability [20,22], and to have distinct textural properties [23]. However, both the nutritional and textural quality of the extrudates is highly affected by the operational process including screw speed, feed moisture and raw material composition used [24], which remain unclear for GP cornstarch extrudates.…”

Effect of extrusion on the carotenoid content, physical and sensory properties of snacks added with bagasse of naranjita fruit: optimization process

“…The TGS are highly consumed because of their low cost and easy preparation, being elaborated mainly from corn or potato starch (St-Onge et al, 2007), and so these are regarded as low nutritional contribution foods. In recent years, the interest of consumers for nutritious foods has increased that provide compounds with health benefits (Brennan, Derbyshire, Tiwari, & Brennan, 2013). Thus, it is important to elaborate such foods, adding fruits, vegetables and grains with high bioactive compounds content, improving their nutritional/nutraceutical properties.…”

Optimization of meat level and processing conditions for development of chicken meat noodles using response surface methodology

“…It is a continuous cooking, mixing and forming process, involves chemical and structural transformations of raw material such as starch gelatinization, protein denaturation, complex formation between amylose and lipids, and degradation reactions of vitamins, pigments, etc. and end product will show distinct textural property such as a high expansion ratio, low density, crispiness, crunchiness and hardness (Brennan et al 2013;Meng et al 2010;Ilo and Berghofer 1999). Noodles are one of main staple food throughout Asian countries (constitutes 20-50% of total wheat flour consumption) because of variety, versatility and satisfying flavour and these features make it suitable for persons of all ages (Hou 2010).…”