The use of fruit powders in extruded snacks

Snacking is part of the day-to-day lives of children. Confectionary, biscuits and savory snacks are snack items most commonly consumed. More needs to be done in terms of producing snacks with a positive health benefit, especially for children. Possible options include addition of ingredients that have positive health benefits such as fruit and vegetables or fortification for example with vitamins or with omega fatty acids. Extrusion cooking has been investigated as a means of producing snacks meeting the dietary requirements of particular groups of the population. This review investigated the interactions between fruit powders, extrusion process and physical properties and nutritional qualities of the resulting product. Potter, et.al. (2013) prepared five different samples; control, apple, banana, strawberry and tangerine. The resulting products had an improved nutritional profile compared with other extruded snack products being low in fat and sugar and a good source of fiber. The snacks received a good level of acceptance on sensory analysis with the preferred sample scoring 4 and 4 out of 5 for appearance and taste respectively. Dehghan-shoar, et.al.(2010) studied The physico-chemical characteristics of extruded snacks enriched with tomato lycopene. Adding tomato derivatives to traditional starchy extruded snacks can improve their nutritional properties by adding lycopene and fiber; however the physico-chemical properties of these products must also be considered. This work has shown that lycopene can be retained in the extruded snacks. Although the amount of lycopene retained after extrusion was very low, variation in the chemical composition of the base ingredients especially increases in the starch content, improved the retention values. Furthermore, if physically resistant material, such as tomato skin is used as a source of lycopene, higher levels can be retained in the final product.

کلیدواژه ها:

Fruit powder ، Extrusion ، Snacks