The weaning period is crucial for the maintenance and continued growth and development of the child. Weaning foods should have good acceptability by both the mothers/care givers and the infants. The main objective of the study was to formulate nutritional rich composite blend, based on locally available ingredients by blending with milk to produce a highly nutritious weaning food to reduce the malnourishment among children. Four different treatments were prepared using the locally available (Wheat flour, chickpea, potato, carrot, linseed and milk) ingredient namely T1, T2, T3 and T4 in different ratio. The different treatments were subjected to organoleptic analysis for testing various sensory attributes via Nine Point Hedonic Scale. Nutritional analysis was done by using standard method of AOAC. Statistical techniques Anova and Critical Difference were used for analyzing the data. The result shows that T2 was liked very much while T1, T3 and T4 were moderately liked by the panel of judges. The result shows the significant (P less than0.05) difference between the overall acceptability of all the treatments. Energy, Protein, fat, ash, Moisture, Carbohydrate, Iron and of formulated weaning foods was higher. Thus it was concluded that formulation of the milk-based weaning food is a good approach to alleviate the malnutrition associated with conventional stipulated cereal-based weaning flour mixtures given in liquid-gruel form.
Weaning Foods with Improved Energy and Nutrient Density Prepared from Germinated Cereals. 2. Nutritional Evaluation of Gruels Based on Barley