In vitro Digestibility, Nutritional and Sensory Quality of Extruded Breakfast Cereal from Maize Grits, Partially Defatted Peanut and Beetroot Flour

In-vitro digestibility, nutritional and sensory quality of extruded breakfast cereals from maize grits, partially defatted peanut and beetroot flour blends was investigated. Composite flour blends was prepared from maize, peanut and beetroot flour in the following proportions: A= (100% maize flour as control), B = (90:0:10), C = (90:10:0), D = (80:10:10), E= (70:20:10), F = (60:30:10), and G = (50:40:10). The breakfast cereals were analyzed for proximate, vitamins, in-vitro protein digestibility and sensory properties. There was significant (P<0.05) difference in the proximate composition, the values ranged from; 4.46 to 6.82%, 3.22 - 7.32%, 0.98 to 1.23%, 3.32 – 4.55%, 3.7 – 4.34% and 75.7 – 83.96% for moisture, protein, fat, fibre, ash, and carbohydrate respectively while energy ranged from 343.31 to 357.54Kcal.  Vitamins A, B1, B2, B6 and C values ranged from 1.60–1671.84 IU, 0.95 – 1.43, 0.95 – 1.50, 1.09 – 1.75 and 8.77 – 16.22 respectively. There was increase in in-vitro protein digestibility of the samples with addition of defatted peanut and beetroot. Sensory evaluation results showed that sample C had the highest acceptability on 9-point hedonic scale

Chemical and Antioxidant Quality of Breakfast Cereal Extruded from Maize Grits, Partially Defatted Peanut and Beetroot Flour Blend

The mineral, essential and non essential amino acids contents and the antioxidant capacity of extruded breakfast cereal from maize grits, partially defatted peanut and beetroot flour blends was investigated. Composite flour blends were prepared from maize, peanuts and beetroot flour in the following proportion A= (100% Maize flour as control), B= (90:0:10), C= (90:10:0), D= (80:10:10), E= (70:20:10), F= (60:30:10), and G= (50:40:10). There was significant difference in the mineral composition of composite flour blends, the values ranged from 6.05-62.32 mg/g, 0.83-4.53 mg/g, 1.03-3.14 mg/g, 163.81-640.03 mg/g for calcium, iron, zinc, potassium respectively. The esstenial amino acids values of the four blends for isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, alanine, threonine, tryptohan and valine ranged from 0.24-1.25, 0.04-1.08, 0.08-0.40, 0.13-0.49, 0.28-0.48, 0.22-0.44, 0.4-0.24 and 0.30-0.69 respectively. There was increase in antioxidant capacity of the sample with beetroot and peanut inclusion. The 2.2 diphenyl 1-1 picryl hydroxyl (DPPH) radical scavenging activity ranged from 4.03-16.83 while the ferric reducing antioxidant power ranged from 15.65-45.53 MgGAE/Mol with trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity was from 10.21-37.01 mmol trolox/Mol and the total phenohic sontent 5.01-22.01 MgGAE/g