Wheat Bran Proteins: A Review of Their Uses and Potential

Wheat bran is a by-product of milling, which has a high nutrient content. However, it is not broadly consumed by humans, but used for animal feed. Wheat bran contains more than 15% high-quality proteins, but most of them are enclosed within a matrix of cell wall polysaccharides and so they are poorly digested, resulting in the annual waste of 15.5 million tons of usable protein. The search for uses of these proteins has been mainly oriented towards their incorporation as fortifiers into food systems, so they have been extracted and characterized in terms of both nutritional and functional properties. Wheat bran proteins have also been explored as a source of amino acids and bioactive peptides or as inhibitors of enzymes of industrial interest. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no extensive exploitation of these proteins.