2.3. Treatments

The two experimental meals, control and functional, weighed a total of 258 g and had the same meal basis, containing 175 g of white jasmine rice (Agrino, Greece), 45 g of Amfilochia pecorino cheese (Amfigal, Amfilochia, Greece), 20 g of unsalted butter (Lurpak, Unsalted, Arla Foods Hellas, Athens, Greece), and 18 g of a legume-based (for the control meal) or the novel miso-type sauce (for the functional meal). The novel miso-type sauce was produced as follows: 100 g of solid material (50% cereal milling by-products at a ratio of 2:1:1 of Mavragani wheat and corn by-product streams mixed with 50% chickpeas of third sorting) inoculated with 0.05% (w/w) A. oryzae spores and incubated for 48 h at 28 °C [13]. The fermented mass was mixed with water to achieve a 15% final humidity of the medium. The mixture was left at 4 °C during the initial 10 days of bioprocessing. Then, the miso product was mixed with a salt solution to achieve a final concentration of the final product equal to 15% w/v in NaCl and the temperature was increased to 35 °C until the 30th day of the fermentation. The salt solution contained 15 g of NaCl while the remaining 85 mL consisted of water–ethanol extracts (mixture containing 30% carrot, 30% orange, 20% apple, 10% banana, and 5% kiwi fruit by-product extracts). The extraction took place under optimized conditions, using ethanol: water (60:40, v/v) as a solvent, at 50 °C for 140 min, under 250 W ultrasound power with an initial solid to liquid concentration equal to 0.05 mg/mL. The control sauce was a mixture of 50% Greek legume paste (Afkos: chickpeas, 1:1, w/w) and 50% boiled water. Figure 1 shows the control (a) and functional (b) meals, prior to their consumption. The dietary composition of the test meals is shown in Table 1.

(a) Control meal; (b) functional meal, before consumption.

Nutritional value of the experimental meals (each meal).