Designing a Score-Based Method for the Evaluation of the Nutritional Quality of the Gluten-Free Bakery Products and their Gluten-Containing Counterparts

Donato Angelino,Federico Morreale,Nicoletta Pellegrini

doi:10.1007/s11130-018-0662-5

Donato Angelino, Federico Morreale + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11130-018-0662-5

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Abstract

Gluten-free (GF) products are consumed both by individuals with celiac disease and by an increasing number of people with no specific medical needs. Although the technological quality of GF products has been recently improved, their nutritional quality is still scarcely addressed. Moreover, the few published studies report conflicting results, mostly because the information from product nutrition facts is the only considered factor. The aim of the present study was to develop a score-based method for the nutritional evaluation of 134 packaged Italian GF bakery products and to compare it with that of 162 matched gluten-containing (GC) food items. The score included the information from the nutrition facts and the presence/absence of some nutritionally relevant components in the ingredients list. Results indicated an overall low nutritional quality of the considered GF bakery products. Additionally, with the sole exception of GF bread substitutes, there was no difference in nutritional quality between GF and equivalent GC bakery products. Future research and development of GF bakery products may take advantage of this scoring method, as it may represent an easy approach to evaluate their nutritional quality. The present findings do not justify the consumption of packaged GF bakery products by people without any specific medical needs.

Highlights

The total exclusion from the diet of foods containing gluten is the only possible treatment for celiac disease (CD), an Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Human Nutrition Unit, Department of Food and Drug, University of Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze 47/A, 43124 Parma, ItalyFood Quality and Design Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands autoimmune disorder sustained by an inappropriate response to gluten ingestion in genetic predisposed individuals [1]
We developed the score-based method by considering two groups of parameters: i) amount of specific macronutrients and ii) nutritional quality of some ingredients in the food formulation
The evaluation of the nutritional quality of GF products has been mainly based on the information retrievable on nutrition facts [8, 10, 15]

Summary

Introduction

Food Quality and Design Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands autoimmune disorder sustained by an inappropriate response to gluten ingestion in genetic predisposed individuals [1]. The GF diet has recently become a cultural phenomenon involving the search for foods free of one or more ingredients that are supposed to be unnatural or unhealthy [3]. The GF market has recently seen a remarkable growth, with sales of GF foods increased about by 136% between the 2013 and 2015 in the US, reaching a total value of around $11 billion [4]. In Europe, the latest economic reports foresee a regular growth rate of about 10% until 2019 [2]

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