Ongoing research supported by the International Union of Food Science & Technology reveals the value of food fortification. In a recent paper food scientist Professor Moutairou Egounlety discusses Gari, a cassava-based fermented food found in the Benin Gulf - Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana.
Every stratum of the population, especially the children, consume this caloric food that has a low nutritive value (protein level: 1-2 per cent). The importance of gari (high consumption frequency and income-generating activity for rural women) and its low protein value led the scientists to undertake research on gari improvement.
Research works, conducted on gari fortification with soybean and/or palm oil, started in early 1993 and have led to new technologies for fortified gari production - in other words, commercially acceptable products.
Egounlety writes that the developed package comprises, among other factors, of the introduction of a simple fortification technique based on the co-fermentation of the raw materials. It involved the incorporation of cooked soybean into cassava mash followed by fermentation of the mixture and processing into a proteinised gari with an improved nutrient density. Furthermore, red palm oil was incorporated into the above mixture resulting in 'proteinised'- 'vitaminised' gari or into cassava mash to yield the 'vitaminised' gari.
The 'proteinised' products had a protein level of 6.9-8.1 per cent while the 'vitaminised' foods had a beta-cartotene level of 754.0 µg/100g compared to 1-2 per cent and none respectively for the unfortified gari.
The fortified gari were exposed at national and international seminars and conferences. Professor Moutairou Egounlety continues that although research is still ongoing, the team decided to transfer these technologies to gari processing women groups in order not only to improve the nutritional status at household level but also to generate more revenues at rural level.
Professor Moutairou Egounlety concludes that from the training sessions organised so far with women, it appears that the consumption of the fortified foods improves the nutritional status of the people, especially the children, while saving the medical and health costs of the family.