Effect of the Coexistence of Oat β-Glucan and Tea Polyphenols on the Quality of Wheat Flour Noodles

Enhancing the nutritional profile of noodles by incorporating bioactive components such as dietary fiber and polyphenols has become an important strategy to meet consumers' health demands. However, the impact of their coexistence on noodle quality requires further investigation. Therefore, this study aims to explore the effect of the combined addition of oat β-glucan (OβG) and tea polyphenols (TP) on noodle qualities, primarily through the evaluation of cooking, textural, and digestive properties. The results showed that the addition of TP increased noodle hardness, whereas the incorporation of OβG (1%→5%) led to decrease (about 23.02%) in hardness and chewiness (about 20.47%) in the OβG+TP groups, indicating that OβG can mitigate the adverse effects of TP on noodle textural properties. When the TP content increased to 2%, the optimal cooking time of the OβG+TP groups (2.56 min) was lower than the TP groups (3.00 min), while the cooking loss (5.85%) was higher compared to the TP groups (5.23%). Furthermore, TP significantly inhibited the protein and starch digestion of noodle. However, with the addition of OβG (5%), the protein digestibility in the OβG+TP group was significantly higher (45.73%) compared to the corresponding TP group (40.33%). Moreover, the OβG+TP group also had a higher proportion of rapidly digestible starch (35.02% vs. 32.41%) and a lower proportion of resistant starch (46.38% vs. 50.18%). These results demonstrated that the presence of OβG attenuates the inhibitory effect of TP on in vitro protein and starch digestion in noodles.