Development and Standardization of Rajma Flour Incorporated Food Products to Combat Malnutrition

Abstract

Malnutrition is one of the major challenges in India. It threatens the long-term human development. In order to reduce the malnutrition problem an effort was made to increase the protein content of the food products, rajma an underutilized legume rich in protein was utilized. Rajma is termed as "king of nutrition”. Germination was more effective method in reducing the antinutritional factors of tannins and phytic acid. It was found that tannins and phytic acid were reduced when the germination period increased. The tannin level of rajma flour was 4.3 mg at 24 hours of germination period and it was decreased to 0.35 g at 72 hours of germination period. Hence it was decided to incorporate the rajma flour germinated at 72 hours because of the decrease of antinutritional factors. The phytic acid decreased to 4.50 mg at 24 hours germination period and 1.5 mg at 72 hours germination periods. Hence it was decided to select the rajma flour prepared from the 72 hours germination period for developing food products. The selected rajma flour was incorporated into the food products of chapathi and murukku at 5, 10, and 15 % level by using the replacement method. The developed rajma flour incorporated products were exposed to sensory evaluation by the trained panel members. The overall acceptability of 15% of the selected rajma flour incorporated chapatti and murukku were excellent. The nutrient content of the selected rajma flour was reported as 10% of moisture, 7 g of protein, 5.5 of fiber, 20.2 g of carbohydrate and 4 mg of vitamin C. The incorporation of rajma flour into the chapathi increased the protein content from 12 to 14 g and in murukku it increased from 14 to 19 g. Hence the incorporation of rajma flour into the food products paves way for reducing not only the malnutrition problem but also many of the lifestyle diseases.