Development of Nutrient Dense, Optimized Novel Complementary Food from Local Cereal-Legume Blends Enriched With Dabi Teff (Eragrostis Teff) Grown In Western Ethiopia

Abstract

Complementary feeding determines children’s growth and survival with implications on health, education, work capacity and productivity in later life and on national economic development. Consequently, the provision of nutritionally adequate, safe and acceptable complementary food to ensure the nutritional well-being of children in early life is more emphasized. There is urgency and opportunity to explore the possibility of developing nutritionally adequate complementary foods based on locally available cereals and legume blends by inclusion of nutritious underutilized plant foods. Poor quality complementary foods due to high dietary bulk, lower energy, protein and iron densities, lower intake of bioavailable iron and inadequate intake of daily required nutrients by children coupled with inappropriate feeding practices are leading to a great risk of nutritional deficiencies. These are among the prime causes of persistent and unacceptably high protein energy and micronutrient malnutrition in infants and young children. Proper food selection, combination and preparation practices that affect the nutrient density, bioavailability and acceptability compounded by age-specific feeding, caregiver’s nutrition knowledge and socio economic statutes of the family are among the known integral components of caregiving to infants and young children feeding (IYCF). The food-based approach is a sustainable way of providing a nutritionally adequate complementary diet through diversification of locally available foods either through own production or purchase from the local market, proper selection, preparation and adequate feeding. The approach also employs the enrichment of traditional foods using nutritious local foods, where if the enriched food is consumed on a regular and frequent basis, it will maintain body stores of nutrients more efficiently and effectively than intermittent supplements. This is an important advantage to growing children who need a sustained supply of macro- and micronutrients for growth and development particularly in rural and semi-urban poor who don’t have purchasing power of commercial fortified foods. The use of indigenous locally available food ingredients to develop complementary products could provide an opportunity to utilize the use of unreached/untouched golden crops to prepare good quality home-made complementary foods for IYCF. xii The main aim of this PhD dissertation work was to develop a nutrient dense optimized novel complementary food from locally available cereal-legume blends through the incorporation of dabi teff, the underutilized crop to be used for IYCF in Ethiopia. Before diving into the detail dissertation works, a scoping review, ethnographic qualitative study and preliminary test on the key micronutrient contents of the principal ingredient (dabi teff) were conducted (Annex V). Proper controlled processing techniques were applied to the selected cereals, legume and oilseed crops. The energy, protein and iron densities of the developed complementary product were compared with the traditional complementary food and the Cerifam® faffa flour (the popular commercial complementary flour in Ethiopia) and checked against the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) recommended standards. The effects of blending ratio variation on the macro- and selected micro-nutrient compositions of the formulations were investigated. Finally, the likely contribution of the optimized novel complementary product to daily energy and nutrient damans by 6-23 months children was checked/modeled against the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) set by the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) child feeding guidelines. This was to verify whether the new product could demonstrate the energy and nutrients adequacy to expect positive nutritional outcomes following feeding of infants and young children. To realize these, the dissertation work was organized into seven interrelated studies in Nedjo district, Ghimbi Zone, Western Ethiopia. The summary of the major findings from each chapter of the study was presented as follows: Chapter 3 presents a scoping review of studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) on the possibility of enriching traditional staple foods using nutritious underutilized plant foods including the effects of common processing techniques on the nutritional value of the resultant complementary products. The review showed that underutilized plant foods such as amaranth seeds, moringa olifera leaf, baobab fruit pulp, Bambara ground nut, chickpea, red teff, soya bean, spinach, peanut and orange-fleshed sweet potato were used to enrich traditional complementary diets. All the studies have proven that enrichment of the staple diets with underutilized nutritious plant foods has resulted in the development of nutritionally dense complementary foods, meeting standards, specifically, with improved micronutrient contents such as iron, calcium, zinc magnesium, phosphorous, and potassium. The most common processing techniques applied were xiii found to be fermentation, germination, malting, extrusion cooking, dehulling and roasting resulting in the improvement of the nutritional values and bioavailability of micronutrients in the complementary foods developed. Chapter 4 presents an exploratory ethnographic qualitative study on traditional usage, social beliefs and cultivation trends of dabi teff (Eragrostis teff), a typical farmer variety teff grown in Nedjo district, Western Ethiopia: including its usage as complementary food. The result showed that there is a profound tradition in the usage of dabi teff, where the participants had shown to have life-long practices of preparing and enjoying a number of food forms from dabi teff which are highly praised in their community. Yet, the practice of using dabi teff as a complementary food is not common and the crop is usually reserved for the nutritional treatment of sick, delivered women and bone-fractured persons. The findings showed that there is a deep-rooted social belief linked to dabi teff among the communities in the area and it was claimed that the crop has strong nutritional potential and is prized as a medicinal food. All the participants argued that eating the different food forms, particularly the “mooqa manyee” (gruel type made from bull hooves and dabi teff flour) and “cafaqoo” (a blouse-like food made from dabi teff), it increases blood volume “dhiiga dabalaa”, boosts energy/strength “humna dabalaa”, and repairs/strengthens the backbone and fractured bones “dugda jabeessa”. It was further claimed that if “mooqa manyee” is served to a recently delivered mother, she would recover from her backbone pain shortly and fast weight gain (postnatal nutrition), and if served to a bone-fractured person he/she would be healed fast and the participants praised the crop using a quote, ‘if we have dabi teff crop in our home, we feel like we have a medicine at home’. Yet, it was told that the cultivation of the crop is declining than the past.