Determination of amino acid content and protein quality of complementary food produced from locally available food materials in Ondo State, Nigeria

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/100gCBR2 = 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