Processing, value addition and health benefits

Millets and pseudo-cereals are one of the most important underutilized food crops, traditionally grown on marginal land and poor agroclimatic conditions. They are highly nutritious having excellent functional food properties owing to the presence of high amounts of nutrients for example, protein, essential fatty acids, dietary fibre, B-complex vitamins and minerals such as calcium, iron, zinc, potassium and magnesium. The presence of high-quality dietary fibres and phenolic compounds makes these grains an important food for health-conscious society. Despite the presence of high nutritional and nutraceuticals components, these crops are still considered a food of poor people. The demand for these underutilized food grains in different parts of the world is increasing steadily as these prevent deterioration of human health such as lowering blood pressure and risk of heart disease, prevention of cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Other health benefits are increasing the time span of gastric emptying by providing the roughage to digestive system. Therefore, to overcome metabolic disorders and life-style diseases, food variety from these grains is the only answer. To drive the maximum nutritional and health benefits, optimized processing and development of value-added products is need of the hour. Lack of processing technologies besides, government policy of hindrances towards these underutilized grains is responsible not to give them a suitable importance in the farming system. Therefore, reorientation of the efforts to generate more demand through value addition through diversification of processing technologies, nutritional evaluation and creation of awareness among the people is required at government, research institutions and food processing industry level. This chapter deals with the experimental studies on the nutritional, functional and health benefits of these underutilized cereals and pseudo-cereals in India and elsewhere. This also reviews the processing techniques and value addition alternatives of various traditional and convenience foods including ready-to-eat food products. Processing technologies used for improving the edible and nutritional characteristics of these grains along with challenges, limitations and future perspectives to promote utilization as functional food for future generations are discussed. It is expected that the availability of the literature on earlier R&D efforts at one place will definitely highlight their significance and shall create more awareness among the researchers, students and the consumers, which ultimately will ensure that these highly nutritious and functional food crops are popularized worldwide.