A mixture design approach to developing a cereal- based complementary meal for better nutritional quality

Abstract

Adequate nutrition is imperative during infancy and childhood because a short period of malnutrition could have a long-term effect on growth,  development and health in the adult life. A mixture design approach was deployed to optimize the composition of a complementary food produced from  available food ingredients – for better nutritional quality. A complementary meal was formulated from a mix of yellow maize, sorghum, millet, soybean,  groundnut, crayfish and fish. The complementary food was analyzed for nutritional composition and anti-nutritional factors alongside traditional ogi (a fermented maize porridge popularly used as food for children) and another commercially available baby food. Quadratic models were able to explain the  moisture and protein content of the complementary food with a R2 of 0.8177 and 0.7284, respectively. Special cubic models were able to explain the ash,  fat and crude fibre content of the complementary food with R2 of 0.9022, 0.8352, and 0.8228, respectively. Multi-response optimization was deployed to  obtain an optimised complementary meal. The multi-response optimization was set to minimize moisture while it maximized the ash, protein, crude  fibre, and fat of the flour blend. The optimized complementary meal had higher ash, fat, fibre and protein content compared to ogi. A 100 g portion of  the complementary meal contained 20.26 g crude protein, 8.13 g fat, 55.75 g carbohydrates and yielded up to 377.21 kcal of energy while a 100 g portion  of the ogi contained 5.71 g crude protein, 1.04 g fat, 83.86 g carbohydrates and energy yield of 367.64 kcal. The mineral contents of the optimized blend  per 100 g portion included potassium (406.10 mg), calcium (50.80 mg), iron (1.04 mg), and zinc (7.53 mg). The optimised complementary meal also had  higher protein, ash, crude fibre and fat when compared to the commercially available baby food. Compared to ogi, utilization of this complementary meal  for children could offer affordable food with adequate nutrients.