Nutritional Analysis of Varied Processing and Complementary Food Formulations with Sorghum, Cowpea and Carrot

The effects of sorghum cultivars (pelpeli and chakalari white), sorghum processing methods (undehulled, roasted and malted), cowpea (0%, 30%) and carrot (0%, 10%) supplementations on amino acids profiles and micronutrients of complementary food produced from several formulations were evaluated. The flours of sorghum, cowpea and carrot were blended guided by 2x2x3x2 factorial design experiment plus one commercial sample as control in producing 25 complementary food formulations. Amino acid profile, vitamin and mineral contents of complementary food produced from 25 complementary food formulations were determined using standard methods. Amino acid profile was determined with Technicon Sequential Multi sample (TSM) Amino Acid Analyzer after the samples have been dried, defatted, hydrolyzed and evaporated. Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS) and High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) were used to determine minerals and vitamins contents of the complementary foods, respectively. Data obtained were statistically analyzed. Complementary foods that were fortified with cowpea had higher scores of most of the essential amino acids than in unprocessed samples. There was slight increase in vitamins in malted fortified formulations than in unprocessed and unfortified formulations. Malted Sorghum cultivars that were fortified with cowpea and carrot had higher mineral contents than roasted samples. Malting had significantly improved the minerals of the complementary food formulations.