What are the nutritional benefits of peas and their use in food?

Peas, also known as cold beans, wheat beans, snow peas, Bidou, national beans and so on. Peas are annual pod crops, originating in western Asia and the Mediterranean region, in China’s cultivation is more extensive. Today’s cultivated peas can be divided into three major types of grain peas, forage peas and vegetable peas according to use.
Pea nutrition
(1) Enhance the body’s immune function peas are rich in a variety of nutrients needed by the human body, especially containing high-quality protein, which can improve the body’s ability to resist disease and recovery.
(2) through the large intestine peas are rich in crude fiber, can promote intestinal peristalsis, keep the stool can be smooth, play a role in cleaning the colon.
(3) Antibacterial anti-inflammatory peas contain substances such as gibberellins and phytochelatins, which are antibacterial and anti-inflammatory and enhance the function of metabolism.
(4) Protection of vision pea seeds contain a large number of carotenoids, lutein , to protect the optic nerve, improve eyesight is very beneficial.
Pea components and applications in the food industry
2.1 Pea Starch Currently, pea starch is mainly used in the food industry to make vermicelli and cold noodles. In order to meet the demand for product innovation in the food industry and the development and popularization of functional foods, it has become the main direction for the development of pea starch to prepare resistant starch by scraping methods, such as physical (moist heat), chemical (cross-linking), or enzyme treatment (debranching enzymolysis), etc. Pea starch has the ability to control blood pressure, and it has the ability to control blood glucose.
Resistant starch has the ability to control blood sugar, improve the metabolism of diabetic patients; reduce the concentration of serum cholesterol and triglycerides, prevent fatty liver disease; can be fermented by colorectal microorganisms to generate short-chain fatty acids, inhibit the development of colon cancer; to promote the human body to the beneficial absorption of mineral elements and other physiological functions.
Using its good physiological functions and unique physicochemical properties, it can be used as a dietary fiber fortifier added to baked goods; as an additive to improve the expansion coefficient applied to extruded grains and other puffed foods; as a food thickener added to sauces, milk beverages, and other products; but also as a food-grade microcapsule coating, to improve the stability of the anti-enzymatic coating, and so on.
2.2 Pea protein pea protein can be used as a food nutrient fortifier, according to its functional properties of different added to different foods, play a balanced nutrition.
Its better solubility, can be applied to beverages, sauces and other fluid food; its good oil absorption and water retention and gel forming can replace part of the meat protein, added to ham and sausage, luncheon meat and other meat products; its certain foaming properties and foam stability, can be added to cakes, pastry and other confectionery foods; its excellent emulsification properties and the stability of the emulsion, can be added as an emulsifier to the flavor and fragrance, Its excellent emulsification properties and emulsification stability can be added as emulsifier to flavor and fragrance, cold drink products and other related products.
In recent years, in order to further improve the nutritional properties of pea protein and increase its utilization rate, pea protein is enzymatically degraded into pea polypeptide to be added into food products, which has become a research hotspot. Compared with pea protein, its peptides, in addition to the nutritional functions of pea protein, have better solubility, stability and anti-gelation properties than pea protein and a wider range of physiological regulatory functions such as prevention of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, improve the immune function of the human body, eliminating excess free radicals in the body, anti-aging and cancer prevention.
Pea peptide has a mild flavor and can be used in the production of infant formula milk powder, and can also be added into adult food to make functional food as well as made into peptide reagents, peptide drugs and so on. The development and application of pea peptides provides a broader market space for the research and utilization of pea protein.
2.3 Pea dietary fiber in the food industry, you can use the physical and chemical properties of pea dietary fiber and its functional properties, it will be added to the flour, strengthen the gluten of the dough, made of pastry products with a special taste and flavor; added to beverages, dairy and other fluid food made of reinforced dietary cellulose new products; added to puffed food, fried food, to improve the flavor, improve the value of the product; Added to sauces and condiments to increase the consistency and improve the product structure.
In addition, in recent years, many studies have used physical methods (mainly ultra-high-pressure technology, ultra-micro-grinding technology, etc.), chemical methods (including acid and alkali methods) or biological methods (enzymes and fermentation) to modify pea dietary fiber, so that its physical and chemical properties and functional properties have been further improved. Its development and utilization will provide a broader market prospect for the application of pea dietary fiber in the food industry.
2.4 Peas in the other components of pea skin is rich in chlorophyll, such as its refined refining can be made into water-soluble, light and heat resistance, good stability of copper chlorophyll sodium salt, can be used as a coloring of edible natural pigments; pea grains are rich in phytic acid, easily soluble in water, ethanol, insoluble in chloroform, ether, can be used as a preservative of fruits, vegetables and aquatic products and color protection; pea grains in the polysaccharides and their pods of polyphenolic substances, can be used as a preservative of fruit and vegetables and aquatic products, can also be used as a preservative. The polysaccharide in pea seeds and polyphenols in its pods can remove free radicals in the human body, with antioxidant, aging effect, polysaccharide solubility, low viscosity and no soy flavor, can replace pectin to become a new type of food additives; polyphenols can be used as a natural antioxidant, preservative, and clarifying agent for alcohol, beverages and so on, applied to the production of food processing. Pea seeds also contain flavonoids and saponins, but the study of the physiological functions of the two is still unclear.