Nutritional and Sensory Evaluation of Protein-Rich Sorghum and Chickpea Pasta

Abstract

Background: A gluten-free cereal-pulse pasta can potentially enhance the protein density without compromising on the level of acceptability in cooking and sensory characteristics.
Objective: To compare pasta prepared with 60% sorghum and 40% chickpea flour to commercial durum-wheat pasta based on a food formulation and sensory research.
Methods: The experimental protocol had 75 experimental units or participants with trained sensory panel and untrained adult consumers. The intervention was tested or administered to study product-development. The main result was protein and other evaluation of dietary fiber, cooking loss, texture firmness, overall sensory acceptability. Standard laboratory, clinical or food-analysis methods were used, and between-condition effects tested using two-sided tests at α=0.05.
Results: The sorghum-chickpea pasta with a 60:40 ratio contained 18.6 ± 0.7 g protein and 9.6 ± 0.6 g fiber, respectively, which are respectively increased by 53.7 percent and 200 percent relative to wheat control. The optimized pasta retained acceptable cooking loss (7.2 ± 0.6%) and achieved an overall sensory score of 7.6 ± 0.7, whereas the 50:50 formulation became excessively firm and less acceptable. The direction and magnitude of the dummy findings were internally consistent across primary and secondary endpoints, and tolerability or assay-quality criteria remained acceptable.
Conclusion: The example dataset suggests that pasta formulated with 60% sorghum and 40% chickpea flour could produce a meaningful improvement in protein content through complementary cereal-pulse amino-acid profiles and structural effects of legume protein on pasta quality. These findings are intended solely as a complete manuscript-development example and require replacement with ethically generated, independently verified observations before scientific submission.