Research abstract
One of the current development trends of the food industry is focused on diversifying the range of functional products in order to improve the general health of the population. In this sense, current research focuses on identifying sustainable sources of natural active biological compounds, respectively on the recovery of by-products generated by the agri-food industry.
Brewers spent grain (BSG) is the insoluble residue generated from the production of wort in the brewing industry. It is estimated that worldwide the annual output is around 30 million tons, about 200 tons of wet spent grain being produced per 10,000 hl of produced beer. This plant-derived by-product is known to contain significant amounts of valuable components, which remain unexploited in the brewing processes. In this sense, the project is focused on developing two functional food products fortified with restructured BSG.
The proposed project aims in a first stage the initial characterization of the selected biomass and the application of treatments to increase the bioavailability of the biologically active compounds. Based on the restructured biomass, two fortified functional food products will be developed and optimized, which will be analyzed from the nutritional, psycho-sensory, microbiological and production costs. Correlations will also be made between product characteristics and total production costs in order to establish the degree of feasibility of new functional foods.
