Haenam-gun Confirms Clinical Effect of Pumpkin Powder on Body Fat Reduction

Published 07 Jan.2022 10:48(KST)

High Added Value Expected with This Year's Human Application and Resistant Starch Functional Food Ingredient Registration

Harvesting Haenam mini chestnut pumpkins. Photo by Asia Economy

[Haenam＝Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Hyun] According to research results on the clinical efficacy evaluation of Haenam pumpkin powder for animals promoted by Haenam-gun, Jeollanam-do, the functionality of body fat reduction, blood sugar improvement, and prevention of metabolic diseases was identified.

On the 7th, the county reported that in this study, obese animals that consumed mini pumpkin powder, a specialty product of Haenam, showed decreased body weight and fat tissue weight despite an increase in dietary intake.

In addition to weight loss due to increased lipolysis and decreased lipogenesis in adipose tissue, the mechanism was proven to improve dyslipidemia and insulin resistance, thereby preventing the occurrence of metabolic diseases.

Furthermore, mini pumpkins contain large amounts of various dietary fibers such as beta-carotene (16.81 mg/100g, twice that of carrots) and beta-glucan, revealing that they are excellent nutritional and functional food materials.

Haenam-gun has, through the agricultural product processing technology standardization project, for the first time in the world, identified that Haenam mini pumpkins contain a large amount of resistant starch and is promoting the registration of functional food raw materials related to weight control efficacy.

Resistant starch is known to pass through the lower gastrointestinal tract without being broken down by digestive enzymes in the human body and promotes the growth of beneficial bacteria in the intestines.

It not only suppresses colon cancer by restoring damaged cell DNA to normal but also has diabetes and obesity prevention effects by slowly metabolizing in the body and interfering with the absorption of digestible starch, emerging rapidly as a functional food material.

Previously, Haenam-gun filed two patents on methods for manufacturing pumpkin starch with increased resistant starch content and pumpkin powder, along with publishing three related papers in academic journals.

With the completion of animal clinical trials, this year they plan to apply for the food functionality evaluation support project conducted by the Korea Food Research Institute to promote human clinical trials on weight control efficacy.

Since most resistant starch materials depend on imports, if the natural resistant starch material derived from domestic agricultural products extracted from pumpkins is registered as a functional food raw material, it is expected to open the way for successful industrialization as well as increase farmers' income.

Haenam-gun cultivates chestnut pumpkins over an area of 80 hectares with about 3,000 farms, generating an annual income of about 20 billion KRW, and it is expected that registering functional food raw materials will create more than five times the added value.

A county official said, “We will seek a breakthrough for the local economy through research and development of agricultural specialty materials using local agricultural products such as mini pumpkins, development of functional foods, and convergence between industries through the establishment of human and material governance and agricultural industry startups.”