Iron fortification in developing of extruded Thai rice snack

To produce an acceptable snack of high nutritional quality for the programs against anemia and malnutrition, the direct expansion snack products were developed from extrusion process using Thai brown rice of two specialty hybridization (variety: 313 and 1000) as basic raw materials. For each variety of brown rice, the optimum operating conditions were investigated with twin-screw extruder at varying screw speed (300 and 350 rpm), type of iron fortificants (ferrous sulphate, ferrous lactate and ferrous fumarate) and level of iron content in snack product (20 and 100% RDI) in the 2×3×2 factorial experiment. Similarly, the optimum operating condition of snack production from each variety of rice had shown that increasing screw speed resulting in extrudate with higher expansion, lower density and broad peak or lower slope of the deformation curve from texture analyzer. The type of iron fortificant had no significant effect on palatability and metallic smell of snack product. Furthermore, the level of iron content had no significant effect on expansion and density of extrudate. It was concluded that all of snack products should be operated at 350 rpm of screw speed, ferrous sulphate as iron fortificant and level of 20% RDI for iron to provide the good appearance and meet the requirements of iron as well as lower production cost. In addition, the representative of the finished products were analyzed for the pattern of nutrition labeling microbiological test and shelf life between 0-4 months on the determination of moisture, aw, TBA numbers, iron content and sensory test which correspond to nutrition claims of high iron and high potential for further commercial production