NAVADHANYA FUNCTIONAL TRADITIONAL FOODS : PERFECT HEALTHY SNACKS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The fast food dietary life style habits had rapidly put the people in the midst of risky conditions especially showed adverse impacts on snacks. Most of the Indian traditional foods typically contains highly nutritious indigenous foods and bringing slight variation in ingredients formulations proved to be more functional. Navadhanya in the Indian culture occupies auspicious place and provide numerous nutritional and therapeutic benefits. In fact, the current pandemic COVID-19 pandemic scenario requires healthy snacking behaviour. Based on this background, the common traditional foods viz., boondhi laddu, mysorepak, kajjikayalu and muruku were purposefully chosen to develop functional foods with the incorporation of navadhanya mix at 50 per cent level. The acceptability studies carried out organoleptically both at the baseline and after storage period of one week had clearly demonstrated highly acceptable mean organoleptic scores and not significant difference statistically. The findings well explained the retention of freshness even at one-week storage period. On the other hand, the nutrient analysis carried out had shown sufficient evidence that the functional foods prepared were energy dense and rich in essential nutrients such as protein, fat, calcium and iron. Promotion of indigenous healthy foods not only improves healthy but also play crucial role in the attainment of food and nutrition security