ABSTRACT

The Mixture Response Surface Methodology was adopted for the modeling and optimization of the African breadfruit based complementary food. The experiment was based on three factors which were the mixture ingredient, African breadfruit (xi ), soybean (x2) and maize (X3), and the sum (xi+ x2 + x3) was always equal to one. The effects of these mixture components and their interactions on the responses — energy, proximate composition, sensory properties and paste viscosity - were investigated with a view to predicting the optimum complementary food using the numerical optimization approach. The optimum complementary food predicted, 69:24:7 (African breadfruit: soybean :maize) was subjected alongside other selected corn plementary foods to further evaluations. These included biological evaluation of the protin quality - protein efficiency ratio (1.90 - 2.9), net protein utilization (64.78 - 95.15), true digestibility (80.75 - 99.64) and biological value (72.67 - 95.49) - mineral and vitamin balances, amino acid analysis, functional properties, antinutrient and microbiological analysis. The amino acid quality of the optimized complementary food, 69:24:7, was outstanding with values of histidine (3.olg/loog), arginine (6.64g1100g), glycine (3.40 g/100g), aspartic acid (10.91g/100g), phenylalanine (5.58 glloog) and alanine higher than the FAO/WHOIUNU reference pattern. The vitamin and mineral absorption and retention studied compared with most reports while the functional properties were adequate. The sensory qualities which were evaluated on hedonic scale had scores that were in the range 6 (like slightly) to 8 (like very much) implying that the products were acceptable while the result of the microbiological and antinutrient analyses showed detected values falling within acceptable limits. These imply that the products besides being nutritionally adequate as complementary foods were safe for consumption.