Chemical Composition, Nutritional Quality and Anti-Nutritional Factors of Weaning Food Prepared From Maize and Legumes

Weaning is a gradual process of introducing solid foods to infant’s diet, alongside breast milk from the age of six months, since the breast feeding along cannot meet the infant nutritional requirement. This study aims to prepared high quality weaning foods from locally available raw materials at low cost. Weaning food was produced from the blends of yellow maize flour with some legumes (soybean, chickpeas and peanut). blends were prepared in a mixed ratio 70:30 using traditional techniques like milling, roasting and drying were evaluated. In samples, chemical composition, anti-nutritional factors, protein digestibility, amino acid content and sensory evaluation were determined. Results showed that the formulated weaning food. The maize used in this experiment were yellow maize of local variety. The results revealed that, the protein content ranged from 12.26% -17.68% of the weaning food blends from yellow maize is similarly close to the recommended daily intake for infants (6 month to 2 year) compared to the raw maize without legumes. The low moisture contents (4.10%), (4.89 %) and 4.72% in maize/ soybean, maize/chickpea and maize/peanut exhibited by the weaning food blends might give a good storage stability. The results of anti-nutrition factors ranges phytic acid (4.81 mg/100 g – 6.25 mg/100 g), Trypsin inhibitor (0.46 TIU/100 g – 0.52 TIU/100 g) and tannins (55.75 mg/100 g – 63.89 mg /100 g) Heat treatment of grains resulted in low levels of phytic acid and higher in vitro protein digestibility ranged from 75.43% to 81.76% of the weaning feed mixtures,. Results on sensory evaluation showed that the best blend was contained maize/chickpeas then maize peanut but maize soybean and control lower acceptability.