ABSTRACT
Aims: Malnutrition among all ages is still a persistent problem in India, especially in areas where the poor largely depend on rice and wheat staples with limited access to diverse diets using underutilized foods. This study was conducted to nutritionally enhance traditional food products like roti and lapsi utilizing suitable composite flours based on amaranth, soybean and wheat without affecting their sensory quality. Study Design: Different combinations of amaranth, soybean and wheat flours were made to suit the quality characteristics of roti and lapsi. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Foods and Nutrition, G. B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar (India), between January and June 2016. Methodology: The sensory evaluation of food products and estimation of nutritional composition of composite flours was done using standard procedures. Results: The composite flours having 25% amaranth, 15% soybean and 60% wheat flour and 25% amaranth, 10% soybean and 65% wheat flour were found to be most acceptable sensorially and were significantly superior to their control counterparts for protein, ash, fibre, carbohydrate calcium and iron content (p=.05). Conclusion: Roti made from amaranth and soybean incorporated composite flours with better protein quality and low available carbohydrates and physiological energy almost same as control would be better diet alternative to diabetic and overweight patients whereas lapsi may be effectively used as supplementary food. Many other traditional food products like laddoo, halwa, puri, parantha, burfi etc. may also be made from such composite flours.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Previous studies have shown that roti and pittu, which are South Asian foods, when prepared with the same composition of wheat flour and coconut scrapings had significantly different (p<0.05) glycaemic index (GI) values. The only difference was in the processing where roti (GI 57) was dry-heated (roasted) and pittu (GI 80) was wet-heated (steam cooked). The present study was carried out to investigate the association between GI and the properties of starch during processing for the observed variations of GI values of roti and pittu prepared with different flour varieties. Methods: The characteristics of isolated starch granules, molecular size distribution pattern of carbohydrates, amylose, amylopectin contents and change in temperature during the cooking of ‘pittu’ and ‘roti’ were analysed. Results: The results indicate that the contribution to GI from starch gelatinisation correlates positively and corroborates with reported data. Thus the significantly low GI values of roti compared to pittu could be mainly attributed to less disintegrated and less swollen starch granules of flour used in the preparation of roti. This was observed irrespective of the variety of flour. Conclusion: This study confirms that wet heat gelatinises starch to a greater extent than dry heat and provides evidence of a possibility that foods processed using dry heat to be associated with lower GI values, than the wet processed foods if other factors are constant.