ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Food Chemistry
Quality and Nutritional Properties of Noodles: A systematic comparison of noodles based on blue, purple, black, and white whole wheat flours
Provisionally accepted
- Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, China
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The evolving consumption trends toward nutritionally enriched foods have spurred interest in colored wheat varieties. This study systematically compared the quality of noodles made from whole flours of blue, purple, and black wheat against a white wheat control. Noodles were formulated with different substitution levels of colored whole wheat flours. Results revealed that colored whole wheat flours significantly enhanced nutritional properties compared to white wheat: black wheat had the highest selenium content (5.28 µg/g), while blue wheat contained the highest anthocyanin level (14.15 mg/100g). The incorporation of colored wheat flours increased moisture content (9.15%–11.36%) and cooking loss (5.22%–8.34%), and reduced noodle hardness, with the 75% purple wheat substitution showing the lowest value (5347.08 g). Although processing and cooking reduced anthocyanin content and ABTS radical scavenging activity, noodles with colored wheat retained significantly higher anthocyanins (42.75%–88.97%) and antioxidant capacity (16.31%–47.42%) than white wheat noodles. These findings demonstrate that colored wheat varieties offer promising potential for developing functional noodles with enhanced nutritional profiles without severely compromising textural quality.
Keywords: Colored wheat, Whole wheat flour, Noodle quality, Anthocyanin retention, mineral
Received: 03 Nov 2025; Accepted: 17 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Yu, Tian, Li, Zhang, Ma and Yin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaoling Tian, ttxling@henau.edu.cn
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