Abstract
The growing human population renders challenges for the future supply of food products with high nutritional value. Here, we enhanced the functional and nutritional value of biscuits, a popular sweet snack, by replacing the wheat flour with 2%, 6%, or 10% (w/w) cricket powder. Consumer acceptance ratings for reference and 2% augmented cookies were comparable, whereas the higher levels of enhancement received inferior consumer scores. This relatively small change in biscuit recipe provided significant and nutritionally desirable enhancements in the biscuits, observed in a series of analyses. An increase in the protein content was observed, including essential amino acids, as well as minerals and fat. This conversion also affected the physical properties of the biscuits, including hardness, and water molecular dynamics measured by 1H NMR. Cricket powder-augmented biscuits join the line of enhanced, functionally superior food products. This and similar food augmentation provide a viable scenario to meet the human food demands in the future.
Highlights
The growing awareness of consumers regarding proper nutrition makes them look for food that is right for them
Insects are widely described as a good source of protein, fat and minerals [56,57,58], so the use of cricket powder (CP) can improve the nutritional value of a biscuit recipe
Replacing wheat flour with cricket powder resulted in a successive reduction in the hardness of cookies from 29.44 N for R to 24.50 N for CP10
Summary
The growing awareness of consumers regarding proper nutrition makes them look for food that is right for them. The main reason for that is the possibility to study different processes in model food systems, including gelatinization [29,30], retrogradation [31] or hydratation of starch [32], lipid oxidation [33], and enzymatic modification of proteins [34] It is useful in the analysis of complex food matrices, as proton fractions of water, lipids, or polysaccharides tend to form separate populations that relax at significantly different rates. Considering the advantages of CP, the importance of enriching food products, and the many changes induced by enrichment and the usefulness of the LF NMR technique in the analysis of food, this investigation was carried out to evaluate how an addition of various levels of CP influenced the nutritional value, consumer acceptance, textural properties, and water behavior on a molecular level of shortcake biscuits
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