People would have to eat at least three bowls of oat porridge a day to receive any heart health benefits, so scientists are looking for ways to concentrate the goodness.
“It is not pragmatic, and you cannot motivate the consumers to consume this product on a daily basis,” said researcher Thava Vasanthan of the University of Alberta.
The key component of oats and barley is a fibre called beta glucan, which forms the cell walls of the kernel.
Vasanthan has developed technology to separate beta glucan from barley so that the healthy fibre can be added to food products.
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Vasanthan calls beta glucan a hidden treasure and described ongoing research to extract this product while speaking at the Alberta Innovates conference held in Edmonton May 11.
Beta glucan has proven multiple health benefits to help control blood serum cholesterol level, improve gut health and aid in diabetes and weight management.
Health Canada, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority have evaluated beta glucan in barley and oats and approved health claims on food products containing it.
The daily requirement is three grams of beta glucan per day to gain a health benefit.
“Can I drink beer to get the benefits of barley beta glucan? Unfortunately no,” Vasanthan said.
That’s because the fibre is lost when beer is processed.
The alternative is adding beta glucan concentrate to cereal, bread, pasta and drinks. Companies are producing enriched cereals, but they are expensive at about $25 per kilogram of beta glucan.
Vasanthan helped form the company Cevena in 2002, which successfully extracted beta glucan from barley. However, the resulting product was too expensive.
He started another company, GrainFrac, in 2014, which extracts a high concentration of beta glucan that sells for $7 to $10 per kilogram.
Researchers have discovered that different barley varieties behave differently during processing.
Variety differences can result in four to 12 percent beta glucan, said plant breeder Flavio Capettini of the Alberta Crop Development Centre in Lacombe.
There is potential to create varieties with higher levels, but researchers have also found that some high-yielding types do not actually deliver the desired amount of fibre at the processing stage.
Variety development and improvement is a long painstaking process. Plant breeders may have 50,000 to 60,000 plots to select from each year, said Capettini.
“If you are lucky, one variety is going to come out of that each year.”
