ABSTRACT
Nutritional evaluation of complementary food formulations from maize, soybean and peanut fortified with Moringa oleifera leaf powder was carried out. Maize, soybean and peanut were blended in a ratio of
60:30:10 to produce a complementary food, which was then fortified. While the unfortified
food product (sample A) served as control, the other three formulations were
fortified with 5%, 10% and 15% Moringa leaf
powder to give three samples (B, C and D respectively) of fortified food.
Nutritional composition determination and feeding trials were then carried out,
using two weeks old male albino rats to determine the performance of the food
formulations. While the crude protein, crude fibre, and ash contents of the
diets increased significantly (p < 0.05) with fortification, with values ranging from 16.04%
to 17.59%, 2.25% to 4.42% and 1.40% to 2.50% respectively, crude fat and
carbohydrate decreased significantly (p < 0.05), with concomitant decrease
in energy, with values ranging from 23.48% to 20.80%, 49.32% to 47.63% and
472.76% to 448.08 kcal/100g respectively in samples A to D. PER values
significantly (p < 0.05) improved up to 10% substitution, from 1.77 in
unfortified (sample A) to 1.90 in 10% fortified (sample C), but declined at 15%
substitution (sample D) to 1.69. Similarly, NPR values increased from 0.71 to
0.76 and 0.68. However, all the PER values including that of Nestle Cerelac
(2.04) were lower than, though within the same range, with the value of 2.10
recommended by the Protein Advisory Group (PAG) for complementary foods. Sample
C (10% Moringa flour blend) gave the
best performance after rat feeding trials.