Effect of methanol/acetone/water extraction and enzymatic hydrolysis on the nutritional value of unheated rapeseed proteins.

The objective of this work was to study the effect of the extraction of phenols by methanol/acetone/water and proteolysis (pepsin 1 hour; trypsin 2 hours) on the nutritional characteristics of unheated rapeseed protein as measured by weight gain, protein intake, net protein ratio, apparent digestibility and absorbed protein. The effect of proteolysis of the methanol/acetone/water extracted rapeseed protein, and the effect of mixing the methanol/acetone/water extract back with the extracted rapeseed protein was also studied. Extraction of phenolic compounds from rapeseed flour significantly improved weight gain, protein intake, net protein ratio and absorbed protein value. However, the mixing of phenolic extract with the extracted rapeseed protein did not appear to have a significant effect. Enzymatic hydrolysis (1 hour with pepsin and 2 hours with trypsin) of the raw material significantly improved the weight gain and protein intake. The combined methanol/acetone/water extraction and protein hydrolysis treatments were beneficial on all nutritional quality parameters of rapeseed protein. These results suggest that the protein-bound phenolic compounds, rather than the free phenolic compounds contribute mainly to the decrease in the nutritional values of proteins associated with phenolic compounds in raw flour before extraction.