Antinutritional characterization in plant foods; health consequences and reduction strategies

Antinutritional factors are the substances that exist in most plant foods. These toxic substances decrease the bioavailability of certain macronutrients, vitamins, minerals and decrease the nutritional quality of food. Oxalates, protease inhibitors, alkaloids, saponins, oligosaccharides, flavonoids, phytates, haemagglutinin, cyanogenic glycosides, and gossypol are a few examples. Plants produce these substances to defend themselves. Their accumulation in the body has deleterious effects on human health, can cause nutritional deficiencies, and can lead to cancer, diabetes mellitus, kidney failure, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease (CVD), etc. This paper deeply examines numerous conventional and modern techniques for removing antinutritional elements from food, including milling, dehulling, soaking, fermentation, sprouting, extrusion, heat treatment, enzyme treatment, steam precooking, dielectric heating, infrared heating, bioprocessing, EPS production by LAB, etc. Applying a single technique is less efficient, hence combinations of two or more methods are frequently used i.e., cooking, autoclaving, and irradiation; extrusion and microwave cooking; blanching, freezing, and frozen storage; boiling and autoclaving, etc. The combination of germination and autoclaving shows the best results by reducing the level of tannins, phytic acid, lectin, trypsin inhibitor, and saponins up to 100% in kidney beans. The purpose of this review is to highlight adequate food processing techniques and to introduce the effectiveness of using more than one method to reduce antinutritional factors in food.