Nutritional Quality of Cookies Produced From Mixtures of Fermented Pigeon Pea, Germinated Sorghum and Cocoyam Flours

Due to the high foreign exchange spent on the importation of wheat and the need to combat issues of malnutrition in developing countries, cookies were produced from flour blends of fermented pigeon pea (FPF), germinated sorghum (GSF) and cocoyam (CF). Proximate composition of the cookies revealed that cookies made with 100%FPF had the highest protein content of 16.13% while cookies made with 100%CF had the least protein value of 6.40%. The antinutritional factors investigated in the cookies were low and within allowable limits. The nutritional quality evaluated by animal feeding experiments revealed that biological values (BV) of cookies ranged from 78.16% (for 100%CF) to 96.57% (for 33.3%FPF:33.3%GSF:33.3%CF); net protein utilization (NPU) values ranged from 70.08% (for 100%CF) to 92.98% (for 33.3%FPF:33.3%GSF:33.3%CF) while true digestibility (TD) ranged from 89.53%(for 100%CF) to 97.88% (for 66.6%FPF:16.7%GSF:16.7%CF). The results obtained suggest that cookies of good nutritional value can be produced from these locally available crops.