Some characteristics of different commercial ready to eat meals intended for babies of 6-12 months

Abstract

Food infant composite meals are complex-based products for infants and toddlers (6-36 months of age). There are a wide variety of infant food dishes available in the market based on different technologies with different flavors, tastes and preferences. During the last 40 years the number of obese children have increased and at the same time there is an increase in diabetes in areas where toddlers are fed by industrial processed foods instead of breast feeding and home cooked meals. One hypothesis is that there exists a correlation between obesity and diabetes based on the consumption of high-heat-temperature treated foods. During industrial production the baby food is often heated at high temperature in order to prolong shelf life, but at the same time Maillard reactions are initiated and continue during storage. One of these Maillard reactions are called advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) and generated by the reaction after initial binding of specific compounds in heated foods or in living organisms. Carboxymethyl lysine (CML) and carboxyethyl lysine (CEL) are AGEs associated with diabetes. These compounds may exhibit fluorescence that can be used as indicators of the Maillard reaction.
A modified method based on LC-MS/MS was performed to analyze CML in commercial industrial produced baby dishes. All samples were freeze dried before the analyses. Thorough sample preparation followed by solid phase extraction (SPE) was performed before analysis on LC-MS/MS. In the beginning of this study the main aim was the characterization of AGEs in freeze-dried infant composite meals. Different trials were performed based on the protocol developed by Tareke et al., (2013). During analysis of the data obtained it was very evident that the internal standards used were disappearing or not being visible, which lead to test different hypotheses. It is important to mention that the protocol developed by Tareke et al., (2013) is based on gruel samples which can lead to an important conclusion that the food matrix of the infant composite meals might be the misleading factor or most probably influencing the behavior of the internal standards (CEL-d4 and CML-d4). After several trials it was concluded that the method modification should be an important part of this study even though at this point the time frame was limited. Even though a method modification was performed the data obtained suggested that it is neither reproducible nor repeatable and can’t be validated as a tool to measure AGEs in infant composite meals.
In addition to the CML method modification a characterization study of infant food dishes was performed including a protein analysis, ascorbic acid and DHA analysis, and color determination.
The protein analysis revealed that there is no significant different in terms of protein content when compared to different sources (fish, meat, pasta and vegetables) and most importantly when compared between high-heat-temperature treated infant food and frozen infant foods. Ascorbic acid and DHA analysis was done in the freeze-dried infant food composites that are high temperature treated and autoclaved. It was performed by the Megazyme microplate assay procedure. The highest values in ascorbic acid were 176.689 mg/100g, 90.619 mg/100g and 90.432 mg/100g obtained from the following meals “potatis och lax med ärtor”, “pasta bolognese” and “Biff Stroganoff” respectively. In DHA the highest values obtained were 4.928 mg/100g, 2.822 mg/100g, and 2.531 mg/100g from the following meals “spagetti & köttfärsås”, “spagetti & köttfärsås”, and “coscous, gronsäker, & kyckling” respectively. The correlation coefficient of DHA and ascorbic acid was 0.1415 showing no linear relationship.
The color of the freeze-dried infant meal samples was measured with Konica Minolta Spectrophotometer. The color was expressed on CIELAB scale. The difference in color intensity was expressed in Chroma Index (C*). A significant difference (p<0.05) in terms of color between the samples with different source of protein and carbohydrates (fish, chicken, meat and pasta) was found. A significant difference in terms of color between all the samples under study was obtained (p=0.02). The “couscous med kyckling and basilica” had the greatest intensity in color with chroma value of 18.87 followed by “Grönsaker med öring” and “Couscous kyckling” with 16.85 and 13.20 respectively.

Popular Abstract

Infant nutrition plays an important role as it can help prevent future chronic diseases as diabetes and obesity. The prevalence of obesity had increased enormously over the last decades. Due to this substation increase and the associated health consequences, obesity is considered the most prevalent and serious challenge of the 21st century. The need for preventive action is mandatory not only by policy making, but also by the development of scientific methods that can help diagnose and identify food-related compounds associated with health issues.
The consumption of ready-to-eat foods is a common tool young parents use to satisfy the nutritional needs of their children due to the simplicity and alternatives find in the market of different meals. The modern western lifestyle is well known by the consumption of high-heat-treated foods because of their distinctive taste and flavor. The supermarkets have a wide variety of different options to satisfy the needs of any toddler. Foods are heated in order to enhance their flavor but most importantly to extend their shelf life and assure safety by eliminating microorganism that could cause spoilage. However, it has been demonstrated that treating foods at high temperatures can produce potentially harmful compounds that promote inflammation leading to possible diseases like the ones mentioned before. Upon heat treatment of foods a characteristic browning reaction and important taste compounds are produced by the so-called Maillard reaction, which are prolonged throughout storage. Maillard reaction products (MRPs) are chemically diverse and nowadays it is well understood that not only compromise taste and flavor molecules but also pose the risk of development of certain diseases.
The Maillard reaction lead to irreversible modifications of amino acids called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Carboxymethyl lysine (CML) and carboxyethyl lysine (CEL) are the most studied and analyzed AGEs in food samples. AGEs had been associated with systemic inflammation and elevation of risk markers for diabetes in humans. These results suggested that limiting the exposure to AGEs at an early stage in life would have positive effect on the future.
Nowadays, the development of scientific methods to quantify the levels of AGEs is indeed very important and can be use as a preventive tool. An analytical chemistry technique such a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry that combines a physical separation with mass analysis was used throughout this study.
Different characteristics such as color formation can evidence the occurrence of the Maillard reaction. Color formation is the primary characteristic of this reaction as brown color development and different pigments are formed during processing and storage. Ascorbic acid is a water-soluble nutrient that is easily destroyed ad high temperatures and is of vital importance for human beings due to its antioxidant properties. It is of interest to quantify in this study as one type of infant composite meals are high-temperature treated. Protein quantification was necessary in order to express CML and CEL per gram of protein and of interest to notice if the protein shown in the label is the same one as when quantified.
The data generated from this study in terms of protein content, quantification of ascorbic acid, color measurements and method modification for the detection of CEL and CML in infant food composites will be useful for the scientific community and consumers, encourage future work in the development of a method, and be useful as a tool to prevent future food-related disorders in children.

• author: Chiang Zambrano, Daniela Sophia
• supervisor: Elin Östman; Eden Tareke
• organization: Food Technology and Nutrition (M.Sc.)
• course: KLTM01 20161
• year: 2016
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• language: English
• id: 8894022
• date added to LUP: 2016-11-08 09:18:13
• date last changed: 2016-12-16 14:06:16