Abstract
The presence of mycotoxins in cereals and cereal products remains a significant issue. The use of natural ingredients such as pumpkin and whey, which contain bioactive compounds, could be a strategy to reduce the use of conventional chemical preservatives. The aim of the present work was to study the bioaccessibility of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and ochratoxin (OTA) in bread, as well as to evaluate the effect of milk whey (with and without lactic acid bacteria fermentation) and pumpkin on reducing mycotoxins bioaccessibility. Different bread typologies were prepared and subjected to an in vitro digestion model. Gastric and intestinal extracts were analyzed by HPLC–MS/qTOF and mycotoxins bioaccessibility was calculated. All the tested ingredients but one significantly reduced mycotoxin intestinal bioaccessibility. Pumpkin powder demonstrated to be the most effective ingredient showing significant reductions of AFB1 and OTA bioaccessibility up to 74% and 34%, respectively. Whey, fermented whey, and the combination of pumpkin-fermented whey showed intestinal bioaccessibility reductions between 57–68% for AFB1, and between 11–20% for OTA. These results pointed to pumpkin and milk whey as potential bioactive ingredients that may have promising applications in the bakery industry.
Highlights
The most dangerous group of mycotoxins found in food are aflatoxins (AFs), produced by Aspergillus species
The addition of pumpkin and whey in the bread making process could be a strategy to reduce the absorbable fraction of mycotoxins at the intestinal level
Barley flour showed ochratoxin A (OTA) concentrations of 511 ± 84 mg/kg, while maize flour presented aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) levels of 6.2 ± 0.3 mg/kg. Based on those concentrations, contaminated breads with the single mycotoxin were prepared for each bread type; control (C), whey (W), fermented whey, (FW), pumpkin (P), fermented whey-pumpkin (FW-P) by adding 1.2 g of OTA contaminated flour or 10 g of AFB1 contaminated flour, aiming to obtain bread concentrations around 1000 μg/kg of OTA and 100 μg/kg of AFB1
Summary
The most dangerous group of mycotoxins found in food are aflatoxins (AFs), produced by Aspergillus species. Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is considered to be the most toxic mutagenic, teratogenic, and carcinogenic mycotoxin, which is classified as a group 1A (carcinogenic to humans) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and the most toxic compound by the European Commission [1,2]. Ochratoxin A (OTA), produced by Aspergillus and Penicillium species, is found in a wide variety of foodstuffs, mainly cereals and cereal-based products. Maximum levels (MLs) of AFB1 and OTA have been established in different food products with values up to 4 and 5 μg/kg, respectively, for cereals and cereal-based products [2]
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