ABSTRACT
Introduction: The medicinal properties of Moringa oleifera plants have been extensively investigated but less is known of its nutrients and phytochemical components. This study evaluated the nutritional and phytochemical profiles of Moringa leaves. Methods: Moringa leaves were freshly harvested from Federal University of Technology community in Akure. The leaves were processed into flour and evaluated for nutritional qualities after being subjected to shade drying, blanching and fermentation techniques. Results: The moisture contents of flour from raw, blanched and fermented leaves ranged from 6.88�0.70g/100g to 7.19�0.64g/100g, while the protein contents were between 24.39�0.18g/100g and 29.93�2.77g/100g. Among the minerals present, potassium had the highest concentration, while copper the lowest value. The Ca/P and Na/K molar ratios of the samples ranged between 18.3 to 24.5 and 0.3 to 0.4 respectively. Total essential amino acids plus histidine and arginine ranged between 38.16g/100g and 42.24g/100g. The phytochemical/antinutrient concentrations in fermented leaf flour had significantly lower tannin, phytate, trypsin, oxalate, phenolic, alkaloid, flavonoid, saponin and terpenoid contents when compared with the flour of blanched and raw leaves. The predicted protein efficiency ratio, essential amino acid index and biological values were highest in raw leaf flour and lowest in blanched leaf flour. The digestible indispensable amino acid index ranged from 51.7% in raw leaf flour to 85.2% in fermented samples. Conclusion: Flour from fermented Moringa oleifera leaves had better nutrient composition, nutritional quality, and a reduction in some antinutrients/phytochemicals than flour from blanched leaves.
ABSTRACT
Protein-energy malnutrition is increasing among children in developing countries due to low nutrient density of traditional complementary diets. Therefore, this study aimed at determining the protein quality of a complementary food produced from cooking banana fruits and bambara groundnut seeds. The cooking banana and bambara groundnut seeds are locally available in both urban and villages markets in Nigeria. The cooking bananas (CB) and bambara groundnut (BG) seeds were processed into flours using standard procedure. The flours were mixed in a ratio of 70:30 (CBR1) and 60:40 (CBR2) of CB and BG respectively. A commercial weaning food (Nutrend) and traditional weaning food, ogi(corn gruel), were used as control food samples. The amino acid content and protein quality of the food samples were determined using standard procedures. Glutamic acid (CBR1 = 4.353 g/100g, CBR2 = 5.804 g/100g) was the highest while cysteine (CBR1= 0.252 g/100g; CBR2 = 0.336 g/100g) was the lowest of the amino acids in the food samples. The amino acids composition increased as the percentage supplementation of bambara ground nut increased in the mixtures. The formulated food sample showed that CBR1 and CBR2 met 31.8% and 42.4% respectively of the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) fulfilment of essential amino acids. The biological value (BV) of CBR2 (90.5%) was significantly high when compared with CBR1 (75.9%) and ogi (52.4%). There was no significant difference between the BV of CBR2with the BV of Nutrend (93.8%). Also, the net protein utilisation (NPU), total digestibility (TD), protein efficiency ratio (PER), feed efficiency ratio (FER) and nitrogen retention (NR) of CBR2 were within a similar range as those for Nutrend. As for the haematological variables, there were no significant differences between those fed the formulated diets and the control samples. The rate of weight gain for the animals fed with CBR2 food sample was higher than those fed with CBR1 and ogi but were lower than those for animals fed with Nutrend and casein. The study established that the CBR2 samples contained the essential amino acids needed to support infant growth and development.