The grain and its derivatives food value is determined by the chemical composition, accessibility of their nutrients, and varies depending on many factors. Grain crops of different families differ not only in the proportion of nutrients, but also in their composition and properties.
Cereal grains do not have dramatic differences in terms of the rate of nutrients, but have certain specific features. The kernels of glumaceous crops after shell removal tend to the chemical composition of naked grain cereals by the content of essential substances. Proteins are vital substances that are a part of any living cell. Their content in the grain, composition and properties determine process and food qualities of the grain derivative products.
One of the most scientifically up to date dietary food products that meets the requirements of sensible and healthy nutrition is cereal flakes, made of oats, millet, barley, buckwheat, pea, wheat, rye, and corn. The cereal flakes manufactured using the advanced process developed by Research and Production Company Agro-Simo-Mashbud, preserve the outer layers of grain as a food product with high concentration of biologically active substances and food fibres, which are a part of therapeutic and preventive healthy nutrition. This factor makes cereal flakes especially valuable, as they are complete and balanced in terms of nutrients and energy value. They are also a preventive product for a number of gastric, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. All the flakes produced by us are wholesome. For example, rye and barley flakes are rich in food fibres, therefore, it is a good idea to use them to purify the body, in cases of obesity, constipation, and diabetes mellitus. Pectines in rye flakes encourage toxins, radionuclides, and pesticides removal, whereas the high content of tocopherols in the barley and wheat fat enables to advise barley and wheat flakes to those who suffer from liver, skin problems, as well as to pregnant women. The wheat flakes have quite a high content of essential polyunsaturated fatty acids, which makes them useful for metabolism normalization, in particular, cholesterol metabolism, for the improvement of blood vessel walls, increasing their elasticity. The specific feature of millet flakes, as well as of buckwheat and pea flakes, is high iron content. Therefore, they may be recommended in cases of anemia as a product increasing hemoglobin count in blood. High rate of carotenoids in millet flakes promotes normal children’s growth, good skin and mucous membrane condition, health of eye cornea, raises body resistance to infections. The availability of water-soluble blennogenous polysaccharides in the oat flakes ensures therapeutic effect and has mild action in the cases of gastric diseases.
Oat flakes contain a very important dietary and food value substance, called lysine, which normalizes the operation of the nervous system, liver, prevents atherosclerosis. Proteins in buckwheat flakes have high content of water and salt soluble ingredients, which facilitates complete accessibility of the product by the human body, and the content of vitamins В1, В2, Н6, РР, Е in buckwheat flakes is the highest among the grain products. Moreover, buckwheat flakes are an abundant source of minerals, e.g. potassium, phosphorus, manganese, copper and zinc. All these make buckwheat flakes a wholesome product, which has high food value and is considered by doctors to be dietary, advised as a part of nutrition for babies and pregnant women. Pea flakes are a good source of vegetable proteins. Pea flakes are also very easy to cook, since cooking takes only 15 - 20 minutes, which is 6 - 7 times shorter than the time of pea grains cooking. While cooking flakes turn into puree, which facilitates their use by children and elderly people. Cereal flakes, being a fully natural product, are included into the up to date nutrition. Flakes require minimum cooking time (up to 5-10 minutes), and some flakes do not need any cooking, which additionally preserves their nutritive ad useful substances.
For the cereal flakes production, at the customer’s request, Research and Production Company Agro-Simo-Mashbud offers three different process flows:
The first option: a short flow, where only the flattening line is used. Using this flow, the customer purchases raw materials (cereal grains of the 1st and 2nd categories) from other suppliers.
The second option: a long flow with the production of all kinds of cereals at the groats facilities with the universal compatible process flow (wheat, fine barley, pea, corn, and oat) and selection of a part of cereals of the 1st and 2nd categories (or all grains) for flakes production. The specific feature of this process flow is the fact that during the cereal production grain hydrothermal treatment is used on the continuous flow steamer and steam dryers, which enables to improve not only processing properties of the grain, but also useful qualities of the finished products. Improvement of the processing properties of the grain is in increase of the grain hulling factor and decrease of damaged kernel rate, which finally leads to the rise in the cereal output by 5..8%, energy savings of up to 20%.
The third option: the most promising and economical flow, where hulled whole kernels are the raw material. To produce them a part of the universal groats mill processing flow is used, including the hulling section. This significantly increases the percentage of finished flakes output compared to the input material, since it excludes all losses while processing grains into cereals, as well as the losses related to the impossibility to use fine categories of cereals (III, IV and more (Artek)) for flakes manufacturing.
The production of oat and corn flakes or oat flakes "Hercules" and "Extra" involves the use of other process equipment than in the above process technology (except for the flattening line) and it basically may be built on the same three process flows.
