쌀의 조리 과정 중 Aflatoxin 감소 효과

Aflatoxin is a secondary fungal metabolite and is a public health hazard because it is a human carcinogenic and has many deleterious effects in men and animals. Rice is one of the better substrates for the fungus which can produce aflatoxins. This study was performed to investigate aflatoxin reduction during the cooking and processing of rice. Aflatoxin was produced by Aspergillus parasiticus ATCC 15517 on well-milled rice(Japonica type) at the level of 13.2 ppb. Cooked rice, rice cakes (baek-sol-gi, plain steamed rice bread), fermented rice (sik-hye, sweet rice beverage), and popped rice were prepared from the aflatoxin-contaminated rice. Aflatoxin content in the samples was determined by high performance liquid chromatography. The total aflatoxin level was decreased to 46.9％ in the cooked rice, 85.6％ in the rice cakes, 11.4％ in the fermented rice, and 7.6％ in the popped rice, respectively (p＜0.05). This reduction brought the level of aflatoxins down to below the Standard and Specification of Korea (10 ppb), except for the rice cakes. These results indicate that washing, steaming, fermentation, and popping of rice was helpful in reducing the aflatoxin level in the rice and the most helpful factors were high temperature & high pressure. More research is needed to understand why the preparation of rice cakes did not reduce the level of aflatoxin as much as the other cooking methods.