In vitro and in vivo digestibility of pea and chickpea powder prepared by cooking and drying treatment

The glycemic indices (GI) of pea and chickpea are normally lower than 60, which are commonly considered as middle or low GI foods. Different processing conditions would influence proportions of rapidly digestible starch (RDS), slowly digestible starch (SDS), and resistant starch (RS) in the processed pea and chickpea. In general, high-temperature cooking followed by high-temperature drying (HCHD) largely kept total starch (68.58% and 61.99% of dry matter in pea and chickpea, respectively), increased RDS (29.89% and 33.40% of total starch in pea and chickpea, respectively) and RS proportions (25.78% and 17.08% of total starch in pea and chickpea, respectively) while the opposite effect in pea and chickpea was observed. Glycemic response of panelists after consuming HCHD pea or chickpea would cause a faster increase of incremental plasma glucose concentration within 30 min, followed by a rapid decrease to baseline compared with the pea or chickpea processed by low-temperature cooking followed by low-temperature drying (LCLD). The GI of HCHD pea and chickpea were 59.02 and 49.15, respectively, which were significantly higher than those processed by LCLD (pea: 32.63, chickpea: 31.91). Both in vitro and in vivo digestibility indicated that LCLD was more suitable to process pea and chickpea powder.