Chia Seeds As Potential Nutritional and Functional Ingredients : A Review of Their Applications for Various Food Industries

Chia seeds, being the golden seeds of the 21st century, have a great potential for the food industries, because of their exceptional nutritional composition and functional properties, have been successively incorporating in the formulating of nutritious products, thus, classifying them as novel food ingredients. The current demand of producing nutritionally enriched and specially designed food products for gluten intolerant, celiac, diabetic, obese and cardiac patients, have taken a greater speed toward exploring the utilization of chia seeds. Therefore, a review about the industrial potential of chia seeds has been performed by focusing research studies belonging to various industries, such as, baking, dairy, oil, meat, extrusion and packaging industry. The studies were mostly conducted with the proportions ranging from 2.5-20% of either intact chia seeds, chia flour, chia mucilage or chia seed oil separately or in combinations. In all the studies, the resultant product has increased nutritional content, particularly PUFAs but may face some technical limitations as the chia seed content increases. However, among all studies it was observed that the 2.5% incorporations of either intact chia seeds, chia flour, chia mucilage or combinations, apart from meeting EU allowance limits, tend to produce products without any detrimental effect on quality parameters and resulted in developed product with high purchase intent