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  • Title: Solving the weanling's dilemma: power-flour to fuel the gruel?
    Journal: Lancet; 1991 Sep 07; 338(8767):604-5. PubMed ID: 1715502.
    Abstract:
    When an infant is around 6 months old, its diet of breast milk and/or formula must be supplemented to fill the energy gap. The baby food industry in developed countries meets the nutritional needs of infants, but, in developing countries, low calorie and low protein content traditional weaning foods, usually gruels based on cereal flours, pose several risk to infants. They often sit a ambient temperatures after preparation providing ideal conditions for pathogenic organisms to grow. Infants eating this contaminated gruel often fall ill with diarrhea. Moreover infants are often undernourished during the weaning period because the gruel does provide the necessary nutrients and calories. This only exacerbates infections. Therefore infants experience growth faltering. In fact, 50% of the children in developing countries are undernourished and their growth and development are hindered. Further, the starch in the gruels swell and gelatinize when heated constituting a viscous, bulky, water retaining paste on cooling making it is too thick for young infants to eat. Plus the starch may not be fully digested. Gruel with added amylase helps digestion. Malting changes the starch to dextrins and maltose which are easily consumed, digested, and absorbed. The addition of oil, fat, or sugar helps in caloric density. In fact, the energy density can double from 40-50 kcal/dl to 80-100 kcal/dl. Another effective process to improve protein and energy digestibilities is fermentation (souring) of cereal gruels. A bonus of fermentation is that the gruel does not promote growth of enteropathogenic bacilli thereby increasing the gruel's shelf life and reducing the incidence of diarrhea. Researchers need to conduct controlled studies of improved traditional weaning foods to determine their ease of preparation and cultural acceptability.
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