Avaliação da digestibilildade e características físico químicas das farinhas de milho e mandioca

Abstract

Slowly digestible starch and resistant starch are usually associated with healthy improvement. The digestibility of food is influenced by its chemical structure and the processing steps used to obtained the foodstuff. These work aimed to evaluate corn and cassava commercial flour regarding to its composition, appearance and in vitro digestibility. Sixteen samples were studied: eight dry cassava flour, six corn flour bijutype and two cassava flour biju-type. The results showed significant differences among samples. Dry cassava floursamples presented higher L* and lower b* values, and higher values to resistant starch content,relative crystallinity and peak viscosity values. The reason of these results is that dry cassava flour preserve starch in native form, as its processing applies low temperature and humidity. Dry cassava flour samples that presented higher b* values also showed higher rapid digestibility starch content, since elevated temperatures are requires to its production. Both corn flour biju type and cassava flour biju type showed the highest values to rapid digestibility starch analysis. Some of these samples did not show resistant starch due to industrial process that uses elevated temperature to obtain biju flakes. This study has demonstrated that the digestibility of the flours analyzed is major influenced by industrial process, and minor influenced by raw material, fiber content and granulometry. It is possible to state that whiter the dry cassava flour, it can be considered as a good source of resistant starch, that can present health benefitappeal.