CIAE Extruded Functional Snacks Food
Snacks contribute an important part of daily nutrient and calorie intake for many consumers. Cereals have been popular raw material for extrusion food uses mainly because of functional properties, low cost, and ready availability. Owing to high protein content, soybean has been effectively utilized for nutritional improvement of cereal-based extruded foods. Extrusions cooking of soy-cereal and other tuber blends are highly required and have nutritional importance. Cereals (corn flour, rice flour, wheat flour); soy flour (DFSF, FFSF, and SPI), dairy whiteners (skim milk powder), fruits and vegetables (mango, guava, papaya, carrot and spinach powder), oil, salt are the raw materials used based on their nutritional properties and suitability for the development of extruded snack foods. All these raw materials were used in flour or powder form. The presently available snack foods have more starch and minimum protein which may lead to obesity, malnutrition and many diseases. The products developed was focused for nutritionally balanced formulated and functional foods and snacks which are successful in the market and meet the intended nutritional requirements and are also accessible to the vulnerable groups of the society at minimum possible cost. It was achieved through the use of plants, dairy and soy food ingredients having high nutrition to minimize the cost and maximize nutrition. The products developed have good quality, shelf life, and consumer’s relish at minimum possible cost so that the developed products have large-scale acceptability and the possibility of commercial production. The protein content, fat, carbohydrate and energy of the developed extruded were found to be 16-21%, 1-2%, 60-63%, and 333-340 kcal, respectively. The developed extruded snack foods are rich in protein (20% - 87% increase) and low in fat are good to supplement protein requirement for school children and for others.