Technological and Bioactive Functionalities of Canola Meal Proteins and Hydrolysates

Canola meal proteins have been credited with some technological food functional abilities, including foaming, water absorption, solubility, gelling, emulsifying, and foaming properties, despite the presence of other nonprotein moieties in the preparations studied to date. Unfortunately, these proteins have found limited practical use in food processing, presumably due to their poor solubility in aqueous systems at neutral pH. Consequently, canola meal proteins are undervalued as food ingredients. There is, however, high potential to improve the value of canola meal proteins via modification, especially by enzymatic hydrolysis to improve their solubility, and, hence, many of these functional properties. Enzymatic hydrolysis can also be employed to generate nutritionally functional hydrolysates and bioactive peptides. The most studied bioactive properties of canola protein hydrolysates was found to be the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor and antioxidant activities, whereas others such as the antimicrobial and anticancer properties have been less investigated. Therefore, this review looks into some of the studies carried out on canola proteins and gives an insight to the future research needs.