Development and evaluation of probioticated food mixes

Great interest has recently been focused on the development of cereal based probiotic foods, since comparatively less work is available on cereal based probiotics. An attempt was made to develop such kind of probiotic food mixture which can be utilized to prepare different kind of food products which suits the Indian palate. Probiotic food mixes were developed using locally available ingredients such as Italian millet flour, wheat flour, soya flour, skimmed milk powder, roasted bengal gram dal powder in the proportion 30:40:11:3:15. Probiotic cultures i.e., single probiotic organism Sporolacto bacillus and mixed culture with the combination of Streptococcus faecalis, Clostridium butyricum, Bacillus mesentericus and Lactobacillus organisms were dehydrated using different dehydration techniques. Freeze drying provided higher survival rate of probiotic organisms i.e., 7.46 × 10⁷ log CFU and 6.16 × 10⁷ log CFU mixed probiotic cultures over spray drying. Moisture, protein, fat, crude fibre, carbohydrate, energy, ash, calcium, phosphorus, iron and zinc content of the developed composite probiotic functional mix were 11 g, 18.10 g, 5.70 g, 3.47 g, 58.77 g, 359 Kcal, 3.19 g, 107.10 mg, 343.22 mg, 5.66 mg and 2.03 mg per 100 g, respectively. Tannin, phytic acid, polyphenol and in-vitro protein digestibly were 111.50 mg, 3.1 mg, 120 mg and 55.3 per cent/100 g in the mix. Nutrient and non nutrient contents were the same in all the three mixes, since the ingredients used were the same except for probiotic culture powders. pH decreased and acidity percentage increased over a period of 60 days storage period in the mixes developed.