Vol. 8, Issue 5 (2019)

Author(s):
Surabhi Chauhan, Pallavi Singh and Shilvi Biswas

Abstract:
Most of the Infants from the rural areas in our country are suffering from malnutrition, the main reason behind their suffering is illiteracy among parents and also the high cost of the nutritional nourishments made for children having age of more than 6 months at commercial level. There are many locally available food materials that can be processed locally to prepare a suitable weaning food for infants which can fulfill their needs for nutrition. By taking into consideration above details, the main objective of this study was to develop suitable weaning food for infants with the help of locally available food material which is economical and having good nutritional composition. The product was developed into 4 different treatments with different combination of wheat flour, carrot flour, potato flour, sesame seeds flour and soya bean flour. T1(35% Wheat Flour, 10% Carrot Flour, 20% Potato Flour, 10% Sesame seeds Flour and 25% Soya bean Flour), T2 (40% Wheat Flour, 10% Carrot Flour, 20% Potato Flour, 10% Sesame seeds Flour and 20% Soya bean Flour), T3 (45% Wheat Flour, 10% Carrot Flour, 15% Potato Flour, 10% Sesame seeds Flour and 20% Soya bean Flour) and T4(50% Wheat Flour, 10% Carrot Flour, 15% Potato Flour, 10% Sesame seeds Flour and 15% Soya bean Flour). The different formulations of product were subjected to organoleptic analysis by the help of hedonic scale test and cost of all different treatments were calculated according to market price of raw material utilized. The organoleptic analysis scores were evaluated which described that according to the sensory score, T3 were more liked by the panels followed by T_4, T₂ and T_1. The cost of the prepared weaning food was around Rs 8.2 –10 (T1 Rs 10, T2 Rs 9.1, T3 Rs 9 and T4 Rs 8.2). The development of this product was an effort for fulfilling the needs for nutrition in children from the rural areas so that they can get more nutritious supplement also cost effective product for low income families.