ABSTRACT
The functional food market is using advanced technologies for convenience, better nutrient profile, and quality of finished product. The extrusion process is of special interest for food industries related to puffs, pellets, pasta, noodles, breakfast cereals, infant foods and other extrudates. Different bioactive compounds from cereals, fruits, and vegetables are added to enhance the nutritional value and sensory score. Extrusion, high temperature, and short-time processing is favorable for destruction of anti-nutrients, growth inhibitors, enzyme inactivation, starch gelatinization, and food safety. However, food extruders intensively mix and homogenize the ingredients and provide shear, thermomechanical, and mechanical energy leading to molecular and conformational changes in raw material and thus reactivity in food ingredients matrix is enhanced. Extrusion process parameters like moisture content, barrel temperature, screw speed, and die dimensions affect the product quality. Thus, this chapter focuses on the extrusion impact on retention of nutrients as well as phytochemicals, destruction of anti-nutrients, protein digestibility, and fiber availability.
