Ebook Nutritive Value Of Three Potential Complementary Foods Based Cereals And Legumes
Scientifically, it has been proved that breast milk is the perfect food for the infant during the first six months of life. It contains all the nutrients and immunological factors an infant requires to maintain optimal health and growth. Furthermore, breast milk also protects infants against the two leading causes of infant mortality, upper respiratory infections and diarrhea [1]. However, at the age of six months and above when the child’s birth weight is expected to have doubled, breast milk is no longer sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the growing infant. Nutritious complementary foods are therefore introduced - also known as weaning foods - which typically covers the period from six to twenty four months of age in most developing countries [2].
On the other hand, nowadays, due to the reduced consumption of breast milk, important nutrients such as proteins, zinc, iron and B-vitamins are likely to be deficient in the contemporary diet of the affected infants [3]. If this development is not well handled during this crucial growth period, it can then lead to under-nutrition. For instance, the first Nigeria Nutrition Network of 2002 [4] identified poor feeding practices and/or shortfall in food intake, as the most important direct factors responsible for malnutrition and illness amongst children in Nigeria.
As in most other developing countries, the high cost of fortified nutritious proprietary complementary foods is always, if not prohibitive, beyond the reach of most Nigerian families. Such families often depend on inadequately processed traditional foods consisting mainly of un-supplemented cereal porridges made from maize, sorghum and millet. In view of this, appropriate processing and blending of locally available food commodities have been carried out and researched into by a number of researchers [5, 6, 7]. Such blends have been found to improve nutrient density of the complementary food and improved nutrient intake, which resulted in the prevention of malnutrition problems. This approach would require knowledge about the nutritive values of a variety of local food commodities, indigenous to the affected communities.
A number of cereals and legumes that are readily available in Jos, Nigeria, have been found to have nutrient potentials that could complement one another if properly processed and blended [8, 9]. Therefore, it is imperative that efforts to formulate composite blends and scientific studies are carried out to ascertain the nutritive adequacy of these locally available blends (cereal and legumes) for possible use as complementary foods, especially by the rural and poor urban mothers during weaning period.
This study is therefore part of exploratory work towards this goal. The primary aim of the study is to formulate some composite blends based on cereals like rice, Acha (local cereal - Digitaria exilis Stapf) and maize and legumes like groundnuts, benniseed (sesame seeds) and Soya beans and then chemically evaluate their respective nutritive values. It is also part of the study to compare the findings from the blend of such cereals with a proprietary formula commonly sold in Jos, Nigeria, as well as the RDA’s to warrant recommendations in terms of nutritive values.
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