Formation of consumer properties of high-protein semi-finished products from cultivated mushrooms

Nutrition as the factor to determine the physical endurance and the intellectual level of a human, growth and development of a young organism, the eagerness to active and creative longevity, always attracted and still will attract the increasing interest in scientists (biologists, physiologists, hygienists etc), technologists and the average consumers. The need of a live body in essential biocomponents such as proteins can be finally defined as its need in amino acids (indispensable as well as dispensable). Definitely, only the valuable proteins can provide the correlation of amino acids in proportions correspondent to proteins of our own tissues. The analysis of nutritional structure in Ukrainian people evidences the constant deficit of food proteins that can be forecast for the nearer future. Therefore, the search for the new sources, the enlarged output and the reformed structure of food proteins is one of the most important and complicated tasks to nutrition, first of all healthy one. The solution to this problem, from our viewpoint, should be accomplished two ways in two parallel trends. The first one is to gradually intensify the agricultural and other traditional methods to produce the proteinaceous foodstuffs; the second one is to elaborate the innovative technologies for obtaining the protein foods from the new and untraditional sources, including the edible mushrooms. The authors of this article, having based on the literary sources and experimental results, proved the preference of using the cultivated mushrooms over the wild ones in terms of their biological value and safety for consumers. The regularities of forming the consumption properties of cultivated mushrooms halfproducts, obtained by low-temperature drying, according to the indices of protein digestibility, correlation between amino acids in free and constrained forms, fractional composition of proteins in different methods of mushroom procession. The conclusion about the perspectives of obtaining the mushroom half products for using in various areas of food industry was made.