iBET (Portugal) and Nofima AS (Norway) are collaborating in a bilateral initiative funded by EEA Grants, entitled ExtraSnack - Impact of the extrusion process on health-related properties of a pea and oat snack.
The project aims to investigate the health properties of novel plant-based snacks, produced by extrusion technology using pea starch, pea protein and oat fiber.
These novel plant-based snacks may play an important role to a healthy vegetarian diet that needs a balanced amino acid composition and enough micronutrients such as iodine, zinc selenium and vitamin B12.
The role of iBET in the project is to characterize the snacks produced by Nofima AS in terms of the main bioactive compounds (e.g. phenolic compounds) and antioxidant properties with the objective to understand how the extrusion process impact these nutritional properties of the snacks.
The ExtraSnack project will run for one year and will include several joint working meetings and conferences between Portugal and Norway.
A short scientific mission was carried out by Cátia Carmo (scientist of Nofima AS) at iBET in the beginning of the bilateral initiative. This internship was focused on the phenolic characterization of the plant-based snacks using chromatographic techniques associated to mass spectrometry.
The ExtraSnack initiative is funded by the Bilateral Fund programme of EEA Grants 2014-2021. This fund supports initiatives aimed at strengthening relations between Portugal and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.