Nutritionally improved pasta with Arthrospira platensis: effect of cooking on antioxidant capacity and pigments content

The functionalizing of staple and economic foods, which means adding health-promoting substances, has been visualized as a solution to reduce the concerning increase in diet-related diseases caused by bad-eating patterns. Microalgae represent an innovative way to solve this problem. Arthrospira platensis, microalgae nutritionally rich in bioactive compounds, has been used to develop hard wheat pasta (semolina) to improve its nutritional value and provide antioxidant properties, but there is scarce information about the effect of adding A. platensis in a soft wheat pasta with egg on these parameters. Given that, this work aimed to assess the effect of adding A. platensis at 1, 5, and 10% in a soft wheat pasta added with egg on the nutritional value. Besides, the total phenolic content (TPC), antioxidant capacity (by FRAP and ABTS), and the spectrophotometric estimation of chlorophylls a + b as well as total carotenoids content were determined after and before cooking. The results showed that adding A. platensis at 5% was enough to increase raw pasta's nutritional value, especially protein by 19.27%, TPC by 3.88%, antioxidant capacity by 48.54%, and 66.09% for ABTS and FRAP respectively, as well as chlorophyll a + b (5.89 mg/100g) and total carotenoids (1.31 mg/100g). After the cooking process losses of 7.40, 16.81 and 0.51% were evidenced for TPC, ABTS and FRAP assays, however, remained 10.63, 62.37 and 70.65% higher than the cooked control. Furthermore, increases of 92.19 and 54.96% for chlorophyll a+b and total carotenoids were evidenced. The addition of A. platensis to pasta represents a way to improve the nutritional value regarding protein content, increase antioxidant capacity, and the content of chlorophylls and carotenoids, without statistically significant modifications in the caloric content. Keywords: Antioxidant, Arthrospira platensis, Carotenoids, Chlorophylls, Functional Food, Pasta.