From underutilized side-streams to hybrid food ingredients for health

Growing global populations and limited resources require more sustainable use of food crops. Lifestyle-related health problems, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, are also an increasing problem in many parts of the world. Major agricultural side-streams, such as cereal bran, oil-press residues and pomace, are currently used predominantly for feed and fuel. However, they have the potential to be sustainable sources of healthy proteins, fibers, and bioactive compounds for human consumption if challenges related to flavor and texture are overcome. Novel processing methods are needed to create healthy and palatable ingredients from agricultural side-streams. From economic and sustainability perspectives, these methods must be energy and water efficient. Dry-milling and dry-fractionation are energy-lean methods that can be used to produce value-added hybrid ingredients from side-streams. These ingredients may be processed further using bioprocessing, thermome-chanical processing, or other methods to improve their applicability in food products.