Effect of Processing on Antinutritional factors in food : A Review

Abstract

Foods in general are abundant in metabolizable nutrients however some minor amounts of secondary metabolites exert effects contrary to optimum nutrition, Processing by means of dehulling, cooking, autoclaving, roasting or extrusion is meant to decrease the anti-nutritional activity. However certain anti-nutritional factors are generated in-situ on processing or in some cases, their contents might increase on primary processing like milling, de-fatting. The effect of processing on decreasing the levels of specific anti-nutrients like trypsin inhibitors, tannins, phytic acid, uricogenic nucleobases, anti-vitamin factors has been elaborated. Besides the anti-nutrients generated during processing of certain food matrices are also highlighted. These include maillard reaction products, acrylamide,protein-bound D-amino acids and lysine-alanine (LAL), trans-fatty acids etc. Since processing is inevitable to modify food to metabolizable forms, know how on mitigation or generation of these anti-nutrients is important to design food processes to provide optimum nutrition.