Cereals and Cereal-Based Foods

Cereals and cereal products are staple foods in most human diets, in both developed and developing countries, providing a major proportion of dietary energy and nutrients. Cereal grains such as wheat, rice, and corn are staple foods consumed worldwide and, therefore, play a decisive role both in agricultural production and in world population feeding. Cereal grains, intact or as debranned kernels or refined flours, are processed into a wide variety of foods, ranging from bread and confectionary goods to breakfast cereals and pasta. Furthermore, particular grain fractions or components can be incorporated into food recipes to improve their nutritional or functional properties. These include specific dietary fibers, vitamins and minerals, partly digested or resistant cereal starches, and secondary metabolites such as phenolic compounds with well-established roles in human health and wellbeing. Due to constant health awareness and readily available information on usefulness of different diet and their direct link with health, the demand of functional food is increasing day by day. The concept of functional foods includes foods or food ingredients that exert a beneficial effect on host health and/or reduce the risk of chronic disease beyond basic nutritional functions. Increasing awareness of consumer health and interest in functional foods to achieve a healthy lifestyle has resulted in the need for food products with versatile health-benefiting properties. Cereal- and cereal component-based food products offer opportunities to include probiotics, prebiotics, and fibers in the human diet. Various growth studies using probiotic Lactic acid bacteria on cereal-based substrates and utilization of whole grain or components as high-fiber foods in developing novel food products lend support to the idea that cereal-based media may well be good probiotic carriers. It is essential that science and traditional knowledge should go together to find mutually beneficial results.

This book addresses functional and health aspects of cereal grains and flours and technological advances of the cereal industry as a sector that needs to operate under the principles of sustainability and circular economy. Cereals are grown in over 73% of the total world harvested area and contribute over 60% of the world food production providing dietary fiber, proteins, energy, minerals, and vitamins required for human health. Possible applications of cereals or cereal constituents in functional food formulations could be used as fermentable substrates for growth of probiotic microorganisms, especially lactobacilli and bifidobacteria or as dietary fiber promoting several beneficial physiological effects. It can also serve as a prebiotic due to their content of specific nondigestible carbohydrates or as encapsulation materials for a probiotic in order to enhance their stability. Increasingly, whole grain is becoming one of the favored choices as a probiotics delivery vehicle. This book sheds light on the health benefits of selected cereal grains, processing technologies of cereals, specific roles of bioactive compounds of cereals in chronic disease prevention, and traditional and latest technologies to improve the functional benefits of cereal-based products. In this context, this book aims to summarize the production processes and health benefits of some of the most commonly consumed traditional cereal-based fermented and non-fer-mented foods.