Food Chemistry & Nutrition

Along with worldwide progress in milling and polishing apparatus and technology advances allows for most kinds of stable food, such as wheat or rice, to be refined by removing the germ, seed coat and aleurone layers. Consequently, these foods lose important nutrient ingredients and many people who eat these foods suffer from related illness. Especially, many peoples are suffering from allergenic problems world widely, especially for advanced and developing countries. For the case of Japanese, about 30% of population is allergy and 10% of the patients were food allergy. Germination is the start of life activity for grains, forming various low molecular bioactive and functional materials, and recent focus has been on germination of cereal grains. In the present research, pseudo-cereals such as buckwheat, quinoa and adlay were used for healthy ingredients. 

Buckwheat grain was fractionated into 17 by graded milling methods: Inner layer contained mostly starch and lower amount of allergenic protein, and outer layer contained large amount of GABA, rutin and large amount of amino acids. Germinated buckwheat also contained various functional materials and  these  germinated  buckwheats were used for Japanese traditional foods: soba natto and soba miso paste processing, and the grains distinctly increased the amounts of GABA; natto (3.3-times) and miso (1.7-times) paste after 60 days’ fermentation. Regarding to immunoblotting using human IgE bound albumin and globulin proteins bands, the amount of proteins in soba natto decreased after fermentation for 36 h. Also, IgE binding allergenic protein bands in soba miso paste became weak. 

Quinoa and amaranth were recommended by NASA as a potential ‘new’ crop for NASA’s Controlled Ecological Life Support System. Quinoa and amaranth seeds were germinated by soaking in water around 30oC. Dehulled groats of buckwheat were also germinated, and these grains were tested for the nutritional, functional properties

and/or immunological protein fractions.