The Preservative Effects of Two Local Nigerian Spices on the Shelf Life of fried Bean Cake Snacks

Abstract

Spices and herbs have been reported to be potent sources of natural antioxidants. Spices are known to impact flavour and improve overall organoleptic quality of foods. The use of naturally occurring materials like spices as preservatives has been proved to be a promising alternative to the use of chemicals. The effects of Aframomum danielli and Zingiber officinale crude extract on the storability of fried bean cake snacks were investigated. Proximate and sensory analyses of the snack were also assessed. The fried bean cakes were spiced with 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1% of both spices, the untreated sample was also prepared making a total of 11 samples. Proximate analyses revealed that moisture ranged from 0.85-1.05%, protein 80.00-78.70%, fat 2.09-1.08%, ash 1.50-1.30%, fibre 2.00-1.80%, carbohydrate 10.25-12.75% and dry matter 3.52-2.30%. Sensory evaluation shows that there was no significant difference (p<0.5) among the treated and untreated samples in terms of all the sensory attributes evaluated. Storage stability test also indicated the preservative effects of the incorporated extracts on spoilage microorganisms at ambient temperature when compared to the control sample. There was, with respect to concentration of extract added, little significant difference in preservative effect between samples preserved with alligator pepper and ginger extracts. Conclusively, the fried bean cake snacks treated with 0.2% and 0.4% of both spices were more acceptable generally and stable than the ones treated with 0.6 and 0.8% of both spices. The fried bean cake snacks treated with 1% of both spices were unacceptable in terms of all the sensory attributes evaluated.

NUTRITIONAL COMPOSITION, MICROBIAL AND SENSORY PROPERTIES OF FURA TREATED WITH Aframomum danielli

“…The result showed that there was reduced microbial load on the treated samples compared with the untreated sample at ambient temperature. Similar findings have been reported by Adedeji and Ade-Omowaye (2013) for fried beans cake. After 48-hour of production, the bacteria load of the untreated fura sample increased more than 10fold to a population of 382 x 10 5 cfu/g.…”