O b o me g h e i, A . A .
Department of Food Technology
University of Ibadan
Ibadan, Nigeria.
Abstract
Protein and vitamin A malnutrition are major public health concern of developing countries including Nigeria and supplementation intervention could be used to improve their intake. Enriched chin-chin was produced from orange fleshed sweet potato and Bambara groundnut flour blends at ratio 60:40, 50:50, 40:60, 30:70 and 100% wheat flour was used as control. Nutritional, histopathological and microbiological analyses were carried out on all the samples. The feed efficiency ratio ranged between 0.26±0.01 and 0.30±0.01. There was no significant difference in feed efficiency ratio values for casein and the 50:50 flour diets, but the values are significantly higher than those of 60:40, 40:60, and 30:70 diets. Significant differences were also found in protein efficiency ratio, net protein retention, protein retention and feed conversion ratio. The protein efficiency ratio reported in this study ranged between 2.45 and 2.91. Necrosis was absent in the tissues examined for the histopathological study. This implies that the diets are safe for human consumption. The microbiological results revealed that the bacterial and fungal values obtained from all samples were low. The bacterial counts of 2.80×104±10.00, 3.20×104±5.77, and 4.20×104±5.77 cfu/g obtained for plastic bottle, high density polyethylene, and low density polyethylene respectively are within the acceptable limits and recommendations (105 cfu/ g) for products of this nature in good manufacturing practice (ICMSF, 2009) indicating the safety of the products for consumption.
International Journal of Food and Agricultural Research Vol.14 No. 1&2 © 2019 by The Development Universal Consortia. All Rights Reserved