Development of extruded products from mixture of Banana juice spent-pulp, maize flours and Moringa Oleifera leaf powder

Banana juice spent pulp (BJSP) is a by-product of banana clear juice extraction. Banana juice spent pulp recovery has been impossible using traditional methods which involve mashing of peeled bananas using grasses to extract juice. Mechanical method of extracting clear banana juice is recent technology which make possible to recover the by-product (spent pulp) after pressing the mashed pulp to get clear banana juice. The spent pulp proximate composition was: 8.18%, and 1.575, 2.60%, and 0.30% and 4.04, 83.29% of moisture, ash, protein, fat, crude fibre and carbohydrate, respectively. These nutritional quality results indicated that it can be used to develop new food products for human consumption. Spent pulp-maize moringa extruded food snack was developed and ratios were BJSP (50-100%), MOLP (0-10%) and and MF (0.50%). Extrude crew speed (SS) and feed moisture content (FMC) were set at 200-400 rpm and 15.21% respectively. Experiments were designed using Design Expert software Version 11 and extraction cooking technology was used as the means of cooking the food products. Amount of iron and betacarotene content in extrudates increased with addition of MOLP, their ranges were 0.68-20.97 mg /100g and0-5.07mg respectively. Extrudates with lower moisture content (5.77%), higher expansion ratio (4.25) and wA1 (6.67 g/g) was formulated with 100% BJSP. High values of WSI 38.345 observed with BJSP and MOLP increased in the presence of low maize ratios, low SS and lower moisture content. Sensory evaluation of three selected extrudates with good functional and quality properties ranked product 707 (100% BJSP) to be the most acceptable. Hence, the study concluded that the BJSP can be utilized individually or mixed with other food materials to develop extruded ready-to-eat snack foods with good nutrional quality with appealing physics, functional and sensory characteristics.