Abstract
Seaweed is a promising sustainable source of vegan protein as its farming does not require arable land, pesticides/insecticides, nor freshwater supply. However, to be explored as a novel protein source the content and nutritional quality of protein in seaweed need to be improved. We assessed the influence of pH-shift processing on protein degree of hydrolysis (%DH), protein/peptide size distribution, accessibility, and cell bioavailability of Ulva fenestrata proteins after in vitro gastrointestinal digestion. pH-shift processing of Ulva, which concentrated its proteins 3.5-times, significantly improved the %DH from 27.7±2.6% to 35.7±2.1% and the amino acid accessibility from 56.9±4.1% to 72.7±0.6%. Due to the higher amino acid accessibility, the amount of most amino acids transported across the cell monolayers was higher in the protein extracts. Regarding bioavailability, both Ulva and protein extracts were as bioavailable as casein. The protein/peptide molecular size distribution after digestion did not disclose a clear association with bioavailability.
Highlights
Consumption of alternative protein sources is forecasted to grow by an annual rate of 9% until 2054 (Probst, Frideres, Pedersen, & Amato, 2015); seaweeds can play an important role in the ongoing protein shift as - unlike terrestrial protein crops - its cultivation does not compete for arable soil or freshwater supply
Total protein yield obtained in the pH-shift processing of U. fenestrata was 11.1 ± 3.7%, which is higher than other works that extracted and precipitated proteins from Ulva sp
The main aim of this study was to assess the influence of a protein extraction method on the digestibility, accessibility, and cell bioavailability of U. fenestrata proteins
Summary
Consumption of alternative protein sources is forecasted to grow by an annual rate of 9% until 2054 (Probst, Frideres, Pedersen, & Amato, 2015); seaweeds can play an important role in the ongoing protein shift as - unlike terrestrial protein crops - its cultivation does not compete for arable soil or freshwater supply. Seaweed can contain all essential amino acids at various concentrations (Abdollahi et al, 2019), most seaweed species, apart from a few red seaweed species like Porphyra tenera (Holdt & Kraan, 2011), have a relatively low protein content (9–22% DW) compared to terrestrial vegetable-protein sources such as soybean (48–52% DW) and lupine (39–55% DW) To fully explore seaweed as a protein source, efforts need to be spent on developing extraction methods to concentrate its protein and to remove potential antinutrients
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