Peas in disguise may increase nutrition

The princess who felt a pea through 20 mattresses would have a hard time even tasting the peas used in Shyam S. Sablani’s food engineering research project.

That’s because Sablani’s peas have been reduced to a fine powder of microscopic pea proteins that could help people get more nutrition in their diet.

Sablani, an associate professor and scientist in the Biological Systems Engineering Department, and two food engineering students are researching the use of yellow peas to create microscopic containers. In a process Sablani called microencapsulation, the pea protein can preserve micronutritional compounds beneficial to human health.

Micronutrients are nutrients that are necessary in small amounts to stay healthy. The micronutrient docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) can be found in fish oil, and has been linked to improving brain and heart health, Sablani said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration included DHA as an omega-3 fatty acid in a 2004 press release, and according to the release the compound “may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.”

While DHA can be inexpensively harvested from the algae that fish eat rather than the fish themselves, it has a distinct flavor and will lose its nutritional value if exposed to oxygen.

Microencapsulation using pea protein protects the DHA from degrading and masks the flavor. The microencapsulated nutrient could be added to a wide range of common foods like bread, milk, or yogurt, Sablani said. These pea-cloaked nutrients could help targeted populations lacking specific nutrition, Sablani said.

“Many foods are already used as vehicles to deliver micronutrients,” said Sablani, citing milk fortified with Vitamin D and iodized salt.

His research project uses a low commercial value crop called yellow peas to provide the pea protein. Yellow peas are grown mostly for animal feed, Sablani said, and to replenish nitrogen in the soil. The peas aren’t worth much to farmers now, but that could change if Sablani’s research can develop new uses for the crop.

Sablani chose to use yellow peas because of the abundance of pea growers in the Palouse region and the funding available from the USA Dried Pea & Lentil Council, a non-profit organization for the promotion of dried peas, lentils and chickpeas. The project also receives funding from the Gates Foundation, Sablani said, which seeks to improve nutrition among impoverished populations in India and other countries.

The study hasn’t been without obstacles, Sablani said. The microencapsulation process involves combining pea proteins dissolved in water with DHA and then turning the solution into a powder using spray drying technology.

However the pea proteins don’t always cover the DHA, which will degrade. The pea proteins also can form a paste that is too thick for the process to be effective, Sablani said.

The project began in September of 2013 and will take about two years to complete, Sablani said. Once the method of using yellow pea proteins to preserve and insulate micronutrients like DHA is developed, it could take several more years before companies decide to use it.

Food industry leaders such as PepsiCo, Nestle and Kraft have to decide if consumers will want to pay for foods enhanced with micronutrients, Sablani said.

“If [the companies] don’t make money, they don’t care about the method,” Sablani said.