Abstract
Extruded soy-cocoa and corn-starch based complementary diet with a protein-energy ratio of 21% holds great promise in alleviating malnutrition so prevalent among Nigerian children under five years. There is however, paucity of scientific information on its safety- a necessary prelude to trials on human subjects. This study reports a controlled feeding trial involving 29 adult wistar rats housed in standard cages and acclimatization for 10 days under tropical room temperature conditions. Following a subsequent daily intubate feeding, 50 - 5000 mg/kg body weight for 21 days, sub-acute toxicity studies (anthropometric, biochemical, haematological and histopathological) were done. Results show that the diet had a statistically significant salutary effect on growth (weight gain 56.9%) of test rats when compared with control (37.85) at an optimum daily intake of 100 mg/kg body weight. Haematological characteristics such as mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) range from 276-294 g/l for treatment groups as against 282 g/l for control with no significant difference (P ≤ 0.05). The values (0.56 - 7.74 µ/kat/l) obtained for alkaline phosphate (ALP)- a key biochemical marker in liver function tests were within permissible limits. Moreover, rat biopsy (histopathology) revealed no necrosis. Evidently extruded soy-cocoa corn starch-based complementary food has no established deleterious effect and may therefore be safe for humans. Key words: Complementary food, extruded soy-cocoa, sub-acute toxicity, food safety, rat biopsy.
Highlights
The end of the 20th century was marked by drastic increase in the incidence of chemical hazards as well as other safety issues (Motarjemi and Lelieveld, 2013)
New complementary foods meant to provide nutritional support for improving growth and for continued reduction in child morality/morbidity are by no means an exception (SACN/COT, 2012)
It was reported that haematological data of test animals showed normal values for white blood cells (WBC) count, red blood cell (RBC) count, haemoglobin (Hb) levels and packed cell volume (PCV) for all the weaning foods studied except the control
Summary
The end of the 20th century was marked by drastic increase in the incidence of chemical hazards as well as other safety issues (Motarjemi and Lelieveld, 2013). (2001) saw no significant difference in the organ weight of the rats fed the test diet as compared to those fed cerelac - a commercial weaning food. Rats fed on extruded weaning foods based on peanut, maize and soybean were observed by Plahar et al (2003) to have between 60-100 fold increases in mean weight gain over the control.
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