Novel hydrothermal modification to alter functionality and reduce glycemic response of pea starch

Despite being an effective and clean-label method, heat-moisture treatment (HMT) is not commonly used for starch modification in industry due to the difficulty of scale-up. This study aimed to develop a novel method of using extrusion combined with high-temperature drying (EHTD) as an alternative to HMT for starch modification. Pea starch was subjected to extrusion at 37.5 % moisture level and with a low-temperature profile (≤ 65 °C), followed by immediate heating at 130 °C for 1 h. EHTD significantly damaged the granules, altered the X-ray diffraction pattern, and reduced the relative crystallinity of pea starch. Overall, EHTD-modified pea starch exhibited increased gelatinization temperatures and decreased gelatinization enthalpy change, lowered pasting viscosity and gel hardness, as well as enhanced enzymatic resistance than the native pea starch. More importantly, in a human feeding trial (n = 20 healthy participants) to monitor plasma glucose response over a period of 2 h after consuming water-boiled sample (35 g starch, dry basis), EHTD-modified pea starch exhibited 22 % reduction (p < 0.01) in plasma glucose incremental area under the curve as compared to the native counterpart. The results indicated that EHTD could be a new simple and clean-label method to produce functional and low-glycemic starch ingredients.