Development of dietary fiber powder supplement from pineapple wastes (Ananas comosus merr).

Abstract

The objective of the study was to develop a dietary fiber powder supplement from smooth Cayenne pineapple residual waste for use in food formulations to enhance fiber consumption in the diet. This helps reduce the gap between individual‟s dietary intake and the Recommended Dietary Intake (RDI). The pineapples were washed, peeled and crushed to extract the juice then sieved to remove the residues. The residual pulp and stems were dried at 65°C for 24 hours in a draft oven then ground to a powder. The pineapple powder was divided into four portions and each subjected to separate treatment of blanching at 90°C for 5 minutes and bleaching with 96% ethanol. One portion of the powder was blanched and bleached, the other portion was only blanched, another portion was bleached but not blanched and the control sample was unbleached and not blanched. The effect of blanching and bleaching on the proximate and physicochemical characteristics of the powder were determined using AOAC standard methods. The results indicated that the unblanched and not bleached sample had fiber content of 17.3 %. The blanched but unbleached sample had 28.1 % fiber content and the unblanched but bleached sample had a fiber content of 25.2 %.The blanched and bleached sample had fiber content of 37.5%. The bleached samples had the highest protein content of 4.6 and 4.5 respectively compared to the unbleached samples (2.6 and 2.5). The bleached samples had higher water absorption capacity (497.2 % and 591.8 %), oil absorption capacity (260.5 % and 292.7 %) and pH. (4.3 to 4.4) than the unbleached samples. There was no significant difference (p<0.05) in the crude fat and bulk density of the 4 different pineapple powder samples. The dietary fiber pineapple powder from this study has physiochemical properties that make it suitable for inclusion in food formulations to produce products with desired functional properties.