By Mbah, B.o.
The study was undertaken to produce cheap, nutritious and acceptable foods
for both young and old from fermented locally available commonly consumed cereal,
tuberlroot and legume flours. Sorghum (SG), yellow maize (YM), cocoyam (CY), sweet
potato (SP) and cowpea (CP) were purchased from local sources. The food stuff were
cleaned and fermented for 72hours. The fermented foods were drained, and sundried
to about 95% dry matter. The dried foods were hammer milled into fine flours and
stored in the freezer in separate polythene bags. The flours were blended into
composites SGCP, YMCP, SGCY, YMSP, YMCY, at the ratio of (70:30) and (60:20:20)
for YMCPCY and SGCPSP for the production of cakes prorridges and jellof agidi. The
crude protein of fermented flours increased in the following magnitude 7.0 to 1 O.8%,
7.0 to 8.8%, 3.7 to 7.0% and 2.6 to 3.6% for SG, YM, SP and CY respectively but
that for CP decreased from 27.5 - 26.5%. The fermented food stuff flour had low
carbohydrate content except for flour from fermented cocoyarn that had an increase
of 0.35% . Fat content of fermented food flour is lower in all cases except that from
SG flour which showed an increase of 5.4% over the flour of an unfermented grain
Cakes, porridges and jellof agidi blends were highly rated by a taste panel consisting
of twenty two persons 15 female and 7 males. Cowpea LCp) had better mutual
supplementary effect had to both SG and YM and the blend containing cowpea SGCP,
YMCP, SGCPSP and YMCPCY had higher protein values and were much more
acceptable than other blends. Cocoyam had similar but lower mutual supplementary
effect and acceptability with yellow maize. From the results SGCP. YMCP, SGCPSP
and YMCPCY containing cowpea, a legume has good potentials and could be
incorporated into children and adult foods when supplemented properly to up grade the
energy and other nutrient intake of the community.