Nutritional and sensory evaluation of carrot flour-incorporated complementary food mixtures for infants

Complementary foods are foods other than breast milk or infant formula introduced to an infant to provide nutrients. The present research was carried out to formulate a low cost complementary food that provides recommended levels of protein, vitamin and minerals for children less than two years old. The complementary food mixtures (CFM) were prepared from unpolished parboiled red rice (UPRR), germinated green gram (GG) and carrot flour (CF) in the ratios of 100:00:00, 80:10:10, 70:20:10, 60:30:10, 50:40:10 and 40:50:10, respectively. The mixtures were analyzed for nutritional qualities such as moisture, ash, protein, fat, fiber and β-carotene, organoleptic characteristics of colour, texture, taste, aroma and overall acceptability and microbial studies to assess the suitability of these CFMs for consumption and its shelf life. The compositional analysis of the CFM revealed that the moisture, ash, protein and fiber content increased from 5.67 to 6.38%, 1.14 to 2.57%, 8.63 to 16.87% and 0.52 to 2.15%, while fat and β-carotene content decreased from 2.83 to 1.86% and 31.45 to 29.37% respectively with the increasing of the GG flour from 10 to 50%. The sensory assessment showed that, there were significant differences (p<0.05) among the treatments and the CFM formulated with 30% GG flour was well acceptable in terms of colour, texture, taste, aroma and overall acceptability compared to other treatments. There were no total plate counts observed in the formulated CFMs. The mixture of 60% UPRR, 30% GG and 10% CF is found to be superior based on the quality characteristics and could be suitable for consumption up to 14 weeks without any significant changes in the quality.