Author(s): Daisy Kameng Baruah, Dr. Mamoni Das and Dr. Rumamoni Bhattacharyya

Abstract:
In the twenty first century, the vagaries of malnutrition like chronic hunger, starvation and micronutrient deficiency continue to affect millions of individuals throughout the developing world; especially among South Asian countries like India, Bangladesh and Burma. Food diversification or food borne strategies like food fortification can be employed to prevent hunger, starvation and micronutrient deficiencies on a long term basis. One of the best food based approach to address these issues is by development of new value added products like Food Multi-Mix (FMM) from local ingredients for better affordability, accessibility and availability among the vulnerable section of our community. WHO and FAO focus on utilization of underutilized legumes which are of high quality protein, dietary fiber and other micronutrients having numerous health benefits. In the present study FMM was developed using underutilized legume (Ricebean), millet (Konidhan), Flex seed, Rice (luit variety) and tomato powder. The objective of the study was to evaluate the nutritional quality of the developed FMM. In the present study two FMM were developed namely FMM-I from unmalted ricebean and FMM-II from malted rice bean. Rice, millets and flex seeds were toasted and ground to fine powder individually. Tomato was oven dried and ground to fine powder. As such half part of Rice bean seeds were malted and other were slightly toasted and ground to fine powder separately. FMM-I and FMM-II were formulated based on energy density (ED) value between 15.12-18.90kJ/g by mixing all the ingredients at appropriate amount. Nutritional evaluation revealed that the anti-nutritional factors like Phytate phosphorus and saponins significantly decreased after malting. The nutritional components increased after malting. From the present study it can be concluded that the FMM developed from malted Ricebean with low level of anti-nutritional factors and high nutritional composition can be used for development or incorporation of different value added products like cakes, cookies and savoury items to enhance food and nutritional security.