ZHAW enriches pulses with vitamin B12

(CONNECT) Researchers at the ZHAW have used fermentation to enrich plant-based foods such as yellow peas with essential nutrients such as vitamin B12 and folate. This offers particular advantages for vegetarians, vegans and flexitarians, because B12 is not contained in a purely plant-based diet and must be supplemented with food supplements.

"We have identified microorganisms that produce vitamins in promising quantities during the fermentation process," says research leader Prof. Dr. Susanne Mischer Schwenninger from the Institute of Food and Beverage Innovation at the ZHAW School of Life Science and Facility Management in a report from her university. This means that no vitamins need to be added to the resulting product, in this case fermented yellow pea flour. It is suitable for processing into nutritious and wholesome pasta or snacks, for example.

In the third and final year of its work in the CREATE project, the interdisciplinary team has succeeded in identifying three microbial strains that also break down FODMAPs (fermentable oligo-, di-, monosaccharides and polyols). Unprocessed pulses such as yellow peas are rich in this group of carbohydrates and sugar alcohols, which can lead to digestive problems. The process is now to be applied to other pulses as well.

The project is a collaboration between three ZHAW research groups: Food Biotechnology, Food Chemistry and Food Technology. Other partners are the Laboratory for Food Biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the foodtech start-up Planted. The project was financed by Gebert Rüf Stiftung as part of the Microbials funding program. ce/mm