Development and Sensory Shelf-Life Testing of KOKO Plus: A Food Supplement for Improving the Nutritional Profiles of Traditional Complementary Foods

Development and Acceptability of Shelf-Stable Microbiota Directed Complementary Food Formulations

BACKGROUND

A randomized controlled trial in Bangladeshi children aged 12 to 18 months with moderate acute malnutrition found that dietary supplementation with the microbiota-directed complementary food (MDCF-2) significantly improved weight gain and repaired gut microbiota compared to the ready-to-use supplementary food. However, the MDCF-2 formulation was made daily from locally available ingredients and the need for a packaged, nutritionally compliant, and organoleptically acceptable MDCF-2 prototype was essential for future large-scale clinical studies.

OBJECTIVE

The study aimed to develop and assess the acceptability of 3 alternative foil-packaged formulations of MDCF-2 in comparison to current MDCF-2.

METHODS

Of the 3 packaged formulations, the Jumpstart version was provided in 2 sachets, the other 2 formulations were provided in a retort-stable foil pouch extended by sterilization, and microbiological growth was monitored over 10 months. The acceptability study included 40 children aged 8 to 12 months living in an urban slum in Dhaka, and the organoleptic properties were assessed using a 7-point hedonic scale.

RESULTS

In the 100 g distributed over the 2 sessions, children consumed 82.5 ± 7.84 g (mean ± SD) of kitchen-prepared MDCF-2, 85.4 ± 7.15 g of the "Jumpstart" MDCF-2 formulation, 85.4 ± 8.70 g of the MDCF-2 with green banana powder, and 86.2 ± 4.26 g of the MDCF-2 with sweet potato formulation. The "Jumpstart" MDCF-2 and MDCF-2 with sweet potato achieved the highest overall acceptability scores on the hedonic scale; although none of the shelf-stable formulations were significantly different from the kitchen-prepared MDCF-2.

CONCLUSIONS

Packaged, shelf-stable prototypes of MDCF-2 exhibited comparable acceptability among Bangladeshi children aged 8 to 12 months to the original freshly prepared formulation.

Microbial Diversity and Metabolite Profile of Fermenting Millet in the Production of Hausa koko, a Ghanaian Fermented Cereal Porridge

Hausa koko is an indigenous porridge processed from millet in Ghana. The process involves fermentation stages, giving the characteristic organoleptic properties of the product that is produced largely at a small-scale household level and sold as a street food. Like many other indigenous foods, quality control is problematic and depends on the skills of the processor. In order to improve the quality of the product and standardize the process for large-scale production, we need a deeper understanding of the microbial processes. The aim of this study is to investigate the microbial community involved in the production of this traditional millet porridge and the metabolites produced during processing. High-throughput amplicon sequencing was used to identify the bacterial (16S rRNA V4 hypervariable region) and fungal [Intergenic Transcribed Spacer (ITS)] communities associated with the fermentation, while nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) was used for metabolite profiling. The bacterial community diversity was reduced during the fermentation processes with an increase and predominance of lactobacilli. Other dominant bacteria in the fermentation included Pediococcus, Weissella, Lactococcus, Streptococcus, Leuconostoc, and Acetobacter. The species Limosilactobacillus fermentum and Ligilactobacillus salivarius accounted for some of the diversities within and between fermentation time points and processors. The fungal community was dominated by the genus Saccharomyces. Other genera such as Pichia, Candida, Kluyveromyces, Nakaseomyces, Torulaspora, and Cyberlindnera were also classified. The species Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Stachybotrys sansevieriae, Malassezia restricta, Cyberlindnera fabianii, and Kluyveromyces marxianus accounted for some of the diversities within some fermentation time points. The species S. sansevieria and M. restricta may have been reported for the first time in cereal fermentation. This is the most diverse microbial community reported in Hausa koko. In this study, we could identify and quantify 33 key different metabolites produced by the interactions of the microbial communities with the millet, composed of organic compounds, sugars, amino acids and intermediary compounds, and other key fermentation compounds. An increase in the concentration of organic acids in parallel with the reduction of sugars occurred during the fermentation process while an initial increase of amino acids followed by a decrease in later fermentation steps was observed.