Weaning Foods: Various Methods of Preparations Focusing on Traditional Steps

Cereals and legumes contribute to the major fraction of macro and micronutrients in our diet. While being loaded with phytochemicals, they also come with a considerable amount of antinutritional factors. These antinutrients interact with the proteins, vitamins and minerals, making them unavailable to the body on consumption. In most of the developing nations of the world, weaning foods are sourced from cereals or legumes that are rich in macro and micronutrients vital for the optimal growth of a developing child. On the other hand, presence of antinutritional factors such as phytates, tannins, trypsin inhibitors and lectins interfere with mineral availability and protein digestibility. Traditional processing techniques such as fermentation and malting increase the availability of nutrients by lowering the levels of antinutrients. A large number of commercially available weaning foods, though nutritionally well balanced, are expensive and unaffordable to people from weaker sections of the society. Thus, there is need for a suitable weaning formulation that is cost effective and meets the nutritional requirements at the same time. To put an end to this problem, healthful yet inexpensive weaning foods can be developed through utilization of local and economical agricultural produce with the help of traditional processing aids or practices including soaking, germination, fermentation, malting, roasting etc. The resulting composites can be a nutritionally balanced, readily available and affordable source of food for infants in the developing parts of the world. This review focuses on the efficacy of such traditional yet inexpensive technologies to improve the nutritional content of weaning foods while keeping the anti-nutrients to a minimum.