Development and evaluation of African breadfruit (Treculia africana) based ready-to-cook food product for the elderly

Gibson Lucky Arueya and Juliet

Abstract

Many elderly often contend with inappropriate and poorly digested food resulting in nutritional and health challenges. Development and use of a ready-to-cook nutrient dense diet to mitigate this, remains largely unexplored, hence this study.African breadfruit (Treculia africana) seeds were malted and processed with selected vegetable-inputs amongst others..Compositional analysis, phytochemical and sundry assays were conducted.The malted product contained protein (19.61%), fat (11.56%) and ash (5.82%). Calcium and iron contents were 416.2mg/100g and 3.95 mg/100g respectively. Total phenols were 5.63mg/g while flavonoids was 1.59mg/g. Water absorption capacity and viscosity were 2.54ml/g and 2.3RVU respectively. Although higher, these values were not significantly different from those of the unmalted (P< 0.05). The malted variant was the more preferred. Rats fed it gained more weight (20-29%) than control (13%). Sub-acute toxicity tests showed that the food was not deleterious. An appropriate Geriatric diet has been developed and found to be acceptable.

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