Protein & elderberry juice for value-added products
According to some, elderberries have a taste similar to blackberries and black currants but have a more “earthy” flavor. Their unique flavor is enjoyed by many these days in culinary treats and elderberry medicine extracts.
The market for elderberry is still being studied and expanded. So a team of researchers from the Plants for Human Health Institute, the Department of Horticultural Science at North Carolina State University and the University of Missouri came together to figure out a better way to develop innovative value-added products for American elderberry.
The soft, small, purple elderberry offers some anti-viral properties. Extracts were even found to slow the progression of dementia in animal studies. However, the researchers noted, European elderberries have long been utilized to produce phytochemical-rich value-added products. The American subspecies? Not so much.
To better utilize the American elderberry, spray dry powders can offer a way to deliver concentrated, color-stable and portable elderberry for use in biomedical studies as well as value-added products.
The research team took the juice and pomace (seeds and peels) and then mixed them with either soybean protein or tapioca starch and spray dried them at 248º F to obtain elderberry powders. To see if one method worked better than another, some juice was fermented before it was dried as well.
The first success was finding that both the soy protein isolate and the tapioca starch as drying carriers microencapsulated elderberry into powders.
According to the National Institutes of Health, “some phenolic compounds work in tandem with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to inhibit” inflammation in humans. The amount of phenolics retained was higher in the powders from fermented elderberry juice.
Other interesting findings included that hygroscopicity (the tendency of a solid substance to absorb moisture from the surrounding atmosphere) and color saturation stayed about the same in either treatment. The protein content and chlorogenic acid (an antioxidant) were much higher with fermented juice, however.
Ready for more fun science? Phytochemicals are naturally occurring chemicals found in or extracted from plants. An important one is quinic acid, a building block in the synthesis of oseltamivir, which is used to treat influenza A and B. When the elderberry juice was powdered with soybean protein, its quinic acid amount was almost six times greater than just juice by itself.
In the juice fermented with S. cerevisiae yeast (aka baker’s yeast), quinic acid and flavonoids (also antioxidants) were about equal – but the phenolic acid totals were more than five times higher than unfermented juice.
The next question answered was about bioaccessibility – how much of a certain compound can actually be absorbed by the human body after consumption. The fermented elderberry juice powders showed substantially more bioaccessibility than juice alone.
Having this information makes growing, harvesting and selling American elderberry possibly more profitable. Knowing that dried elderberry powder – especially after the juice has been fermented – doesn’t lessen the fruit’s health benefits is a win. Knowing that it can even improve those benefits is a bigger success.
The researchers also concluded that the addition of protein powder aids intestinal recovery and bioaccessibility (possibly through the protection of phenolics during digestion).
Their studies have shown that these methods to turn American elderberry juice and pomace into color- stable powders for use in phytochemically enriched, value-added products is possible and deserve more attention for those growing the little purple berries.
by Courtney Llewellyn
