Recipient Organization
KANSAS STATE UNIV
(N/A)
MANHATTAN,KS 66506
Performing Department
Human Nutrition & Foods
Non Technical Summary
Each year the U.S. government through the USDA, USAID and World Food Program provide food aid in the form of fortified blended foods (FBFs). Fortified blended foods (FBFs) are micronutrient-fortified blends of milled cereals and pulses that represent the most commonly distributed micronutrient-fortified food aid. The most common types of FBF, is a vitamin and mineral fortified mixture of corn and soy, known as corn-soy blend (CSB). Processed foods make up 26% of the share of food aid products from the United States, and CSB is the most widely used FBF (Webb et al. 2011). Similarly, FBFs make up 25% of the food aid volume at the WFP, which aims to increase the use of FBFs to 80% (Webb et al. 2011). These FBFs have been criticized due to lack of efficacy in treating malnutrition, and it has suggested that alternative commodities, such as sorghum and cowpea, be investigated instead of only corn and soybean. A study commissioned by USAID encouraged the development of new cereal-bases FBFs and specifically pointed out that sorghum "could be well suited, given its acceptability in Africa, relatively low price, and its acceptability among host governments. A sorghum-soy (or indeed sorghum-pea or other pulse) blend could be envisaged (Webb et al. 2011)."One of our first activities will be a baseline assessment of the implementing country to help us understand the local context and are implementing partners. The local context will inform what food aid productsare developed through research and development at K-State. Raw materials locally and regionally for the food aid productsalong with selecting facilities with extrusion, processing and manufacturing procedures to produce the product.Food aid prodcuts will be produced and their nutritional effectiveness will be assessed at K-State as well as through a study of food aid recipients.Economic feasibility will assessed considering local context and to incorporate efficacy study findings. We will then make final recommendations, report, and publish articles based on this work. Our final step will be to apply to add the newly developed FBFs to the food basket for food aid producers to request.Webb, P., Rogers, B., Rosenberg, I., Schlossman, N., Wanke, C., Bagriansky, J., Sadler, K., Johnson, Q., Tilahun, J., Reese Masterson, A., and Narayan, A. (2011). Delivering Improved Nutrition: Recommendations for Changes to U.S. Food Aid Products and Programs. Boston, MA: Tufts University.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
40%
Applied
30%
Developmental
30%
Goals / Objectives
Determine the bioavailability (absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination) of nutrients and bioactive food components.
Determine the efficacy and mechanisms of action of nutrients and dietary bioactive compounds towards improved health.
Project Methods
Research at K-State would focus on optimizing FBFs for the efficacy study collaboratively with partners in the target country or countries to ensure that they are a good fit for local and regional procurement. The research activities will include processing and physiochemicalproperty determination, animal efficacy and shelf-lifestudies. Some brief method explanations for this work are:Physiochemical property determinationWill include Bostwick consistometer determination to ensure the flow rate of porridges meets USDA specifications.Rat studies20-23 days of age Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 10) will be purchased and randomized into different study groups, where they will consume their diets for 4 weeks. Four weeks is the recommended duration for determining the protein efficiency ratio (PER) and for the prophylactic-preventive method. Iron bioavailability in prophylactic-preventive method will be assessed through hemoglobin and hepatic iron concentrations as we have done previously.Shelf-lifeAccelerated and real time shelf life studies will be conducted to study the time dependent changes occurring in FBFs. The tests would follow standard methods certified by the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (now AOAC International) and commonly used by the North American food industry and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Official Testing laboratories.ReferenceDelimont NM, Fiorentino NM, Opoku-Acheampong AB, Joseph MV, Guo Q, Alavi S, Lindshield BL. Newly formulated, extruded sorghum, cowpea, corn, and soy containing fortified-blended foods lead to adequate vitamin A, iron outcomes and improved growth compared with CSB+ in rats. J Nutr Sci. 6: e18, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1017/jns.2017.15