Abstract:
The wheat aleurone layer is rich in dietary fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals, phenolic substances, lignin, and other nutrients. For many years, the large-scale production and application of wheat aleurone layer flour has been restricted by separation and preparation technologies. The main reason is that the wheat aleurone layer and the outer skin layer are very tightly combined and difficult to be separated. Most of the aleurone layer flour used in the research is prepared by miniaturized laboratory equipment or manual peeling, which cannot achieve a large-scale application of aleurone layer flour. In recent years, the wind vortex shear mill that based on the cyclone vortex shear separation technology has been successfully developed, which can be used for the industrial production of wheat aleurone layer flour. At the same time, researches on wheat aleurone layer flour at home and abroad are mainly focused on the nutritional value, but there are few reports on its safety evaluation. In this study, the wheat aleurone layer flour was industrially produced by cyclone vortex shear separation technology with the bran from 5 flour processing plants, which was compared with the flour and whole wheat flour produced from the same batch of net wheat. The results showed that the ash content of the aleurone layer produced by collecting wheat bran from different factories was about 13-15 times that of flour and 4 times that of whole wheat flour. The moisture content of aleurone layer was close to that of flour and whole wheat flour, while the fatty acid value was significantly higher, and the storage time was more than 3 months under room temperature and sealed condition. The content of dietary fiber, iron, alkyl resorcinol and the heavy metals such as chromium, lead, and cadmium in the aleurone layer flour was significantly higher than that of flour and whole wheat flour. Surprisingly, the content of chromium and lead in some aleurone layer flour exceeded the national limit standard. Therefore, the aleurone layer flour owns extremely high nutritional value, but it is not suitable to make flour products as a single raw material. The aleurone layer flour and the common wheat flour could be mixed in a certain proportion to obtain the compound powder, which can not only improve the nutritional value of common wheat flour, but also ensure the safety of the compound powder.