Nutritional and carbohydrate characteristics of wheat and chickpea based weaning foods.

Weaning foods based on malted wheat and chickpea (MWF), popped wheat and chickpea (PWF), and roller dried wheat and chickpea (RWF) were prepared. The PWF and RWF were blended with 5% barley malt flour to formulate low bulk popped (PWFM) and roller dried (RWFM) foods. The amino acid contents, carbohydrate fractionation, pasting characteristics and in vivo carbohydrate digestibility of the foods were determined. Also the liver characteristics of weanling rats fed on the foods were assessed. The foods contained 17.0-18.3% protein, 1.7-3.7% fat, 67.1-67.5% available carbohydrates and 11.1-12.0% dietary fibre. The lysine content of the food proteins ranged from 4.2 to 4.6%. No appreciable difference in the amino acid contents among the different foods and also between the low bulk popped and roller dried foods (PWFM, RWFM) and their high bulk counterparts (PWF and RWF) were observed. The moisture content of the fresh livers of the animals fed on low bulk foods, namely MWF (60.9%), PWFM (63.9%), and RWFM (65.7%), were lower than the high bulk PWF (67.1%) and RWF (70.7%). A similar trend was recorded with respect to fresh and dry weight of the livers. The fractionation of the food carbohydrates by Sepharose CL 2B gel indicated partial hydrolysis of amylopectin fraction and increase in amylose fraction of starch of the MWF, PWFM and RWFM. The PWF also showed a prominent intermediate fraction. The Brabender viscograms of the RWF and PWF exhibited considerable cold paste viscosity, revealing the pregelatinised nature of the starch in these food, but the viscosities of MWF, PWFM and RWFM at 10% slurry concentration were too low to be recorded by the instrument throughout the heating and cooling cycle, probably due to the hydrolysis of their starch by the malt amylases. These observations show that blending about 5% cereal malt with high bulk weaning foods has advantages with respect to reduction in the dietary bulk by partial hydrolysis of carbohydrates, but does not alter their amino acid content significantly.