Phytochemical Profiles and Health-Promoting Effects of Cool-Season Food Legumes As Influenced by Thermal Processing

The effects of four thermal processing methods (conventional boiling, conventional steaming, pressure boiling, and pressure steaming) on phytochemical profiles, antioxidant capacities, and antiproliferation properties of commonly consumed cool-season food legumes, including green pea, yellow pea, chickpea, and lentil, were investigated. Four groups of individual phenolic compounds, including phenolic acids, anthocyanins, and flavan-3-ols, as well as flavonols and flavones were quantified using HPLC, respectively. As compared to the original raw legumes, all processing methods caused significant (p < 0.05) reduction in total phenolic content, procyanidin content, total saponin content, phytic acid content, chemical antioxidant capacities in terms of ferric reducing antioxidant power and peroxyl radical scavenging capacity, and cellular antioxidant activity as well as antiproliferation capacities of cool-season food legumes. Different cooking methods have varied effects on reducing total phenolics, saponins, phytic acids, and individual phenolic compounds. For all cool-season food legumes, steaming appeared to be a better cooking method than boiling in retaining antioxidants and phenolic components, whereas boiling appeared to be effective in reducing saponin and phytic acid contents. In the case of lentil, all thermal processing methods (except conventional steaming) caused significant (p < 0.05) decreases in gallic, chlorogenic, p-coumaric, sinapic, subtotal benzoic, subtotal cinnamic acid, and total phenolic acid. All thermal processing methods caused significant (p < 0.05) decreases in (+)-catechin and flavan-3-ols in each cool-season food legume.