Detalle Profesor

Nuestros investigadores

María Icíar Astiasarán Anchía

Centro(s)
Ciencias de la Alimentación y Fisiología
Facultad de Farmacia y Nutrición Universidad de Navarra
Directora
Centro de Investigación en Nutrición Universidad de Navarra
Líneas de investigación
Esteroles y sus oxidos, Fracción lipídica de los alimentos, Oxidación lipidica y antioxidantes, Alimentos funcionales, Nuevas formulaciones de derivados cárnicos

In the last 35 years I have collaborated in more than 30 research projects, all them in the area of Food Science and Technology and related with the quality and nutritional improvement of food.
In relation with meat products, the more relevant results have been: a) the optimization of use of enzymes to accelerate the elaboration process of dry fermented products; b) studies related with the quality of traditional local products (chorizo de Pamplona) and c) in the last two decades the focus was the improvement of the nutritional quality through the development of technological solutions to decrease the amount of salt and overall the substitution of pork back fat by ingredients suitable to change the lipid fraction of meat products. In this way we have developed a lot of work trying to improve the lipid fraction of several meat products in order to decrease their negative health effects. Also we have contributed through numerous works to the update of the amount of trans fatty acids in some controversial foods as snacks and biscuits. We have also worked in the unsaponificable lipid fraction, in this case focus on those compounds with beneficial health effects, as it is the case of plant sterols (with proved hypocolesterolemic effect). The stability of phytosterols added to foods in order to get functional foods have been studied, especially the effect of different culinary and storage conditions.
In the last decade the main works have been focused on the development of functional ingredients through diverse techniques related with the development of delivery systems of biocompounds from lipid origin (high molecular weight omega 3 PUFA) and antioxidants extracts from plants. Different vehicles based on emulsions and gelled emulsions systems have been investigated in order to establish their suitability to be used as total or partial substitutes of traditional ingredients of foods. Some relevant results have been obtained applying these ingredients in meat products and bakery products reaching final products with lower energetic values and/or healthy lipid profiles. Moreover in vitro gastrointestinal digestion has been carried out in different reformulated products and functional ingredients in order to study the bioaccesibility and bioactivity of different bioactive compounds.