Desenvolvimento e caracterização de pó à base de grãos de kefir liofilizados

Abstract

In the current scenario, there is an increase on consumers looking for food with a focus on health and safety. Then, increasing the interest in the functional foods, responsible for providing beneficial effects on health, by food industries and producers, aiming to meet the needs and interests of consumers, probiotics stand out in this food group. Thus, this study aimed to develop powders based on microbial polysaccharides from water and milk kefir grains which were selected for physical-chemical, microbiological and non-clinical safety tests in vivo using Danio rerio. The grains received by donation were submitted to the freeze-drying process to obtain water kefir (GKA) and milk (GKL) grains powder samples and evaluated. A better nutritional profile was verified for the GKL, with higher percentages of lipids (9.17%) and proteins (18.59%) and both with a high percentage of carbohydrates. For Aw, Soluble Solids, pH and Acidity parameters, the parameters were maintained as reported in the scientific literature. The samples showed satisfactory microbiological quality for the presence of pathogen. The highest counts of microorganisms occurred for GKL (lactic acid bacteria 1,1 x 10 6 CFU/g) and GKA (acetic acid bacteria 4,0 x 102 CFU/g). The locomotor activity test against Zebrafish (Danio rerio) did not show any action of the samples on the locomotor activity of the animals, in addition to not having observed any death during 96 hours, characterizing the samples as safe for human consumption. The samples showed significantly different physicochemical characteristics, being safe for human consumption from a microbiological and toxicological point of view, thus providing new information about kefir grains for possible application.