Energy, Iron and Zinc Densities of Commonly Consumed Traditional Complementary Foods in Nigeria

Aim: To assess the energy, iron and zinc densities of ten selected commonly consumed traditional complementary foods in Nigeria.
Study Design: Survey and Experimental study.
Place and Duration of Study: Department of Hotel and Catering Management, Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, and Department of Human Nutrition, University of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria between June and August, 2004.
Methodology: A validated interviewer-administered questionnaire was distributed to 600 nursing mothers and used to identify the most commonly consumed traditional complementary foods in Nigeria. Thereafter, ten traditional complementary foods were selected and analyzed for proximate composition, iron and zinc using Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC) and Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometric methods.
Results: The traditional complementary foods have high moisture content ranging from 55.80% to 91.17%. The protein content of the complementary foods ranged from 1.06g/100g to 13.81g/100g. The energy densities of the selected traditional complementary ranged from 0.48kcal/g to1.50kcal/g. The study revealed that half of the traditional complementary foods in this study did not meet the PAHO/WHO recommendation of 0.8kcal/g while the remaining half exceeded this basic requirement for energy densities. However, the high requirement of 7.7mg and 1.6mg for iron and zinc densities respectively, could not be met by any of the complementary foods assessed.
Conclusion: Incorporation of some animal foods into these plant based diets will have a lot of advantages as animals-source foods are good sources of readily available haemiron and zinc. Therefore, more recipes should be developed to improve the intake of animal source foods which are needed to ensure adequate protein, iron and zinc densities of complementary foods for infants in Nigeria.