PHYSICOCHEMICAL AND SENSORY QUALITIES OF EXTRUDED SNACKS FROM BLENDS OF TIGERNUT, CASSAVA FIBRE, SOYCAKE AND MAIZE FLOUR

Abstract

Food consumers prefer foods that are tasty, healthy, convenient and functional at the same time. Functional snack that is rich in protein and fibre was obtained using regression equation from blends of tigernut, maize flour, soycake and cassava fibre and extruded manually in the laboratory to obtain minimum of 10% protein.Spent grain from starch extraction (Cassava fibre) was obtained from MATNA FOODS. It was washed, dried in air oven and ground into flour. The defatted soycake was obtained from JOF Ideal Family Farms Ltd. Yellow variety of maize (Suwan 1 SR.Y maize seed) was obtained from Institute of Agricultural Research and Training (IAR&T). The maize was decorticated, sorted to remove foreign materials, dried, milled and sieved using 200μm sieve. The flour samples were blended to obtain fine samples and each was mixed with salt, sugar, flavor, water and it was extruded (manually) and baked. The developed snacks were analysed for proximate composition, functional properties, physical properties, microbiological qualities, anti nutritional factors, mineral composition, in-vitro (protein and starch) digestibility and organoleptic qualities. The snacks contain crude fibre ranged from 12.40 to 17.92%, crude protein from 13.65 to 25.45%, total ash content from 2.59 to 5.22%, moisture 2.82 to 4.84% and carbohydrate from 48.07 to 62.20%. The range values of physical properties of the snack were 2.32 to 3.86cm for lenght, 0.52 to 1.02cm for breadth, 2.32 to 3.86cm for height while 2.07 to 9.64 and 9.55 to 25.49cm for volume and surface area respectively. The anti-nutritional factors include phytic acid 4.13 to 5.74mg/g, tannin 0.01 to 0.02mg/g, oxalate 0.59 to 0.85mg/g, cyanide 3.36 to 6.78mg/kg and trypsin inhibitor 64.32 to 67.27%. The mineral element include Fe with range values of 12.8 to 130.2mg/100g, K 6680 to 9150mg/100g, Zn 25.6 to 46.5mg/100g, Mn 3.0 to 20.7mg/100g, Cu 2.9 to 8.6mg/100g, Na 4490 to 7650mg/100g while Ni, Pb and Cd which are dangerous to health were not detected. T-MSC 5 sample was rated best in overall acceptability when compared with other samples. Acceptable and high nutritional value snack can be produced from tigernut, maize flour, soycake and cassava fibre. TMSC-4 sample has the potential to be adopted as convenient functional snack.