Author(s): Manisha Dutta, Dr. Pranati Das and Moloya Gogoi

Abstract:
Complementary foods are the main source of nutrients for infants in developing countries but they fail to provide nutritionally adequate and safe diets for older infants and young children. The high starch content in plant based complementary foods leads to low-nutrient diets that are bulky and dense, with high levels of anti-nutritive factors. In addition, there is often microbial contamination, which leads to diarrhea, growth-faltering, and impaired development, and the presence of chemical contaminants may lead to neurological disease and goitre. A number of convenient fortified proprietary formulas are available in developing countries but they are often too expensive and out of the reach of lower income families. The use of home based complementary food that can be easily prepared, available and affordable, is one feeding alternative that has been recommended to remove the effect of malnutrition on infant and young children. Traditional household food technologies have been used for centuries to improve the quality and safety of complementary foods. These include de-hulling, peeling, soaking, germination, fermentation, and drying. To increase the functionality and nutritional worth, cereals, millets and legumes are usually pre-processed by using these household level processing techniques. While modern communities tend to reject these technologies in favor of more convenient fast-food preparations, there is now a resurgence of interest in older technologies as a possible means of improving the quality and safety of complementary foods when the basic diet cannot be changed for economic reasons. This paper describes the utilization of traditional household processes that can be used at the household or community level to develop suitable food formulations from germinated cereals, pulses, millets and oil seeds in the form of cereal-pulse based complementary food to improve the quality and safety of complementary foods.