Vitamin A Activity of Rice-based Weaning Foods Enriched with Germinated Cowpea Flour, Banana, Pumpkin and Milk Powder

Normah Hashim*¹ and Jirapa Pongjata²

¹ Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43000 UPM Serdang, Selangor Malaysia.

² Department of Food Science and Technology, Lumpang Agricultural Research and Training Center, P.O. Box 89 Muang Lumpang 52000, Thailand.

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study was to identify the effect of different drying methods on vitamin A activity of formulated weaning food. Weaned foods on vitamin A activity of formulated using treated cowpea flour, locally available rice flour, banana-pumpkin, skim milk powder and sugar in the ratio 35:35:15:15:5. Treated cowpea flour consisted of original cowpea flour, 24 h germinated cowpea flour. Each treated flour was mixed separately with the other ingredients and cooked into a slurry. Each mixture was either oven-dried or freeze-dried to produce a dry flaky mixture. The carotenoid composition of the product was determined by HPLC. Vitamin A activity of oven-dried weaning food was significantly reduced (p<0.05) compared to freeze-dried weaning food. The freeze-dried weaning foods showed a higher retinol equivalent than oven-dried weaning foods for all treatments. The results of the study found that an intake of 100 g of freeze-dried weaning foods enriched with banana-pumpkin and cowpea flour provided an adequate amount of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin A for infants.

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