Maize meal fortification and its impact on maize porridge quality

Food fortification involves adding essential vitamins and minerals to foods to prevent micronutrient malnutrition and birth defects and thus improve overall health. Although maize meal is an important staple food in many African countries, only 30% of the industrially milled maize meal on the continent is fortified so the potential for better health is still enormous. A major drawback for maize meal fortification however is that it may provoke sensory (colour, taste) changes in the cooked maize porridge leading to rejection by the population. To get insight in the mechanisms driving this food quality issue, the impact of fortification premixes and some of its components (Fe and Zn fortificants) on porridge quality was studied for maize meal stored up to 10 weeks. Furthermore, the interaction with type of maize meal (super or special), type of water (demi or tap water) and type of cooking pot (stainless steel and aluminum) was investigated. Porridges were produced with a standardized cooking trial. Porridge colour was measured with a colorimeter (L*a*b*) and a rheometer was used to perform pasting experiments on the maize meal. It was found that Fe and Zn fortificants, did not impact porridge colour when demi water was used for porridge production. When applying tap water for porridge production, colour changes were observed for all Fe fortificants (ferrous sulphate, ferrous fumarate, NaFeEDTA).