The Potential of Amaranth as a Basic Raw Material for the Production of Pasta for a Vegan Diet

Abstract

The growing public interest in vegan products due to their association with health creates a need for new nutritious products that could cover nutritional deficiencies in the vegan diet. This study aimed to evaluate the potential of amaranth pasta and amaranth pasta blends with buckwheat or oat flour for a vegan diet to provide the limiting nutrients. Different types of pasta were developed in the current study—pasta from amaranth flour, and pasta samples from amaranth flour partly substituted with buckwheat or oat flour. The nutritional and energetic value, sugars, fatty acids, amino acids, and iron content were determined for all samples. All developed pasta samples can be evaluated as products with increased nutritional value, which provide more than 15% protein of the total energy with a sufficient content of lysine, methionine, and threonine; the iron content in the samples covered over 30% of the daily reference intake for iron; and the content of unsaturated fatty acids was above 70% of the total fat content. More nutritious pasta for a vegan diet can be obtained by substituting amaranth flour with buckwheat or oat flour. By improving the technology of amaranth pasta developed to obtain instant pasta, it would be possible to develop disaster food with high nutritional value.