Nutritional and Sensory Qualities of Palmyrah (Borassus Flabellifer.L) Odial Based Snack Foods

Abstract

A research was conducted to develop nutritionally value added products with palmyrah odial to be used as snack foods and select the best among them by evaluating their nutritional and organoleptic characteristics. In this busy world, people have lack of time to prepare their meal. As quick and easy meal ideas are important to master, ready to serve meals have achieved an unbreakable place in the market. Therefore, a research was carried out to make ready to serve snack foods such as flakes, dried pellets and Ready To Serve (RTS) cereal powder using the locally produced odial for make it as more palatable and to increase its consumption. Twelve types of different mixtures were produced using boiled dried palmyrah tuber, rice, maize, sorghum, soybean, green gram, black gram and sugar. By adding different proportions of odial flour, varieties of mixtures were produced. Also by changing the amount and the combination of the cereals, the differences were created among the treatments. Nutritional and sensory attributes of the twelve developed cereal mixtures were evaluated to select the best among them and some kinds of snack foods were developed from the best mixture, T7 . The nutritional as well as sensory values of snack foods and the base mixture were evaluated to select the best product. The findings of this study revealed that the developed products are not significantly differed in their nutritional attributes. Cereal mix wet pellets prepared from the basic mixture and RTS cereal powder are the best products considering their sensory quality attributes.