Development of an extruded cassava-soy complementary food

Abstract

In Uganda, 48% of the population is food energy deficient with regular diets failing to provide minimum dietary requirements for an active and healthy life. Current interventions by development partners such as WHO, FAO, WFP and World Vision are largely focused on using Corn-Soy Blend (CSB), a complementary food designed to address undernutrition. CSB is relatively expensive and only accessible in hospitals and refugee settlements since it’s costly to most low income households. Therefore, there is need to develop an affordable readily available nutrient dense complementary food that can easily be adopted by communities. The study aimed at determining the optimum formulation and extrusion conditions for production of an instant complementary food from cassava- soy- flour. Design expert and Nutri-survey were used to come up with cassava- soy formulations, guided by the nutritional requirements for children under five years. Cassava and soy were prepared following standard procedures to optimize nutrient density, improve on sensory acceptability while reducing the ant-nutritional content. Cassava varied between 70-87% while soy varied between 13 to 30%. The cassava:soy (70:30) formulation had a significantly higher energy (316 kcal per 100g on dry weight basis) than the other formulations (p < 0.05) and a protein content of 16.3%. This is higher than the protein for breast milk (9.1 g/d) for children aged 12–23 months. The optimum formulation of 70% cassava and 30% soy was extruded at temperatures between 60 and 150 oC and moisture content between 16 and 30%. The optimal formulation had a protein content, protein digestibility and viscosity of 12.04 mg/100g, 70.9% and 1086.63 Cp at a desirability index of 0.77. The optimal extrusion temperature-moisture content combination was 145.6 oC and 19.7%. Therefore, a nutrient enhanced complementary food product was developed from a mixture of cassava and soy flour to treat moderate acute malnutrition.