Food by-products to fortified pasta: A new approach for optimization

A new method is proposed to design fortified pasta enriched with food by-product. The method is based on the optimization of a whole quality index (WQI) that accounts for the nutritional and the sensory quality of a specific functional food. The method has been tested using three different types of durum wheat semolina-based pasta: a) adding maize bran; b) adding grape marc flour; c) adding brewers’ spent grain flour. The sensory, as well as the nutritional quality of pasta, were assessed and the WQI was calculated for each of them, as a function of the food by-product concentration. The optimal food by-product was calculated first by fitting a modified version of the Weibull function to the data set (i.e., WQI vs food by-product); afterwards, the parameters obtained from the fitting procedure were used to determine the food by-product concentration at which the WQI reached its maximum value. The three different types of pasta were produced at the optimal food by-product concentration and their sensory and nutritional quality determined, thus confirming that the proposed method allows determining the best formulation of fortified pasta to optimally balance sensory and nutritional aspects.