Electric Food Extruder

In the formulation of functional foods, bioactive compounds are added to the base mix, mainly from fruits, vegetables, cereals, oil plants, legumes and industrial food byproducts such as fruit residues. These sources provide phenolic compounds such as anthocyanins, flavonols and proanthocyanidins in addition to betaines, carotenoids, vitamins, amino acids and complex polysaccharides (such as dietary fiber sources). During the extrusion cooking process, the ingredients are mixed, conditioned and converted into a molten fluid, which leads to the degradation or release of functional compounds, which is caused by structural and chemical changes due to the influence of some process variables such as temperature, moisture content, screw speed and inherent factors such as the geometry of the extruder.

Retention of bioactive compounds to obtain extruded functional foods is an important topic. The description of the degradation process by mathematical models has been used to determine the influence of process variables on the stability and concentration of certain compounds in the final extruded product. These models have been successfully applied, showing good fit and fully describing the changes of these compounds in the extrusion cooking system under specific conditions.