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Hunger, Technology, and Society

Alexander C. Mosha,U. Svanberg

Published 1983 in Food and Nutrition Bulletin

ABSTRACT

Observations of traditional child-feeding practices in many developing countries reveal that the weaning period, defined as the whole period during which breast milk is being replaced by other foods, usually starts when the infant is 4 to 6 months old and is extended to the age of two to three years 11). During this time, special foods are rarely available for the children. Consequently, they have to depend on the same types of foods as those eaten by adults. In the poor countries, these foods are mainly starchy tubers like cassava and sweet potato, or cereals like maize, rice, wheat, sorghum, and millet. Small children are normally given these staples in the form of gruels, i.e., boiled with water. When prepared in this way, the starch structures bind large amounts of water, which results in gruels of high viscosity (2). Such gruels need to be further diluted with water in order to give a consistency that is appropriate for child feeding. This dilution, however, decreases the energy and nutrient density of the gruel, and the child has to eat large amounts in order to satisfy his requirements. This high volume/viscosity characteristic of a diet is usually referred to as “dietary bulk”, and the importance of this factor in relation to child feeding has earlier been investigated in our laboratories and reported in a series of papers (2-5). Industrial manufacture of cereal-based weaning foods often includes operations intended to reduce the dietary bulk, e. 9. enzyme (amylase) treatment, pre-cooking, or extrusion. These processes modify the starch structures and hence result in lower water-binding in the gruels. However, such sophisticated technologies make rather expensive products even when low-cost alternatives are developed (6), and in poor countries these products are normally only available to urban children of higher income families. An alternative to industrial processes for reducing the dietary bulk of cereal-based weaning foods seems to be increased use of improved traditional food preparation procedures that will also modify starch structures. One such procedure that is widely known and used is germination. Germination of cereals is mainly associated with the preparation of local alcoholic beverages, but there are also a few examples where this procedure is used in preparing local weaning foods with seemingly low dietary bulk (7). In the many situations where dietary bulk is an important factor in the aetiology of protein-energy malnutrition in pre-school children, the promotion, possibly after modifications, of germination procedures in the preparation of weaning foods may constitute an effective alleviation. The purpose of this paper is to provide further information on some alternative methods that can be applied.

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