WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Jean-Michel N’zebo N’zebo*, Pascal Amédée Ahi, Ghislaine Chepo Dan and Lucien Patrice Kouamé

ABSTRACT

This study was carried out to determine the effects of heating time and temperature on the nutritional composition, phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity of T. tetraptera fruit pulp. The pulp were extracted from mature dried fruits, grinded into powder and baking at different temperatures (75, 90 and 100°C) and times (10, 20 and 30 min). The heat-treated samples were then analysed using standard methods. The results revealed that when both time and temperature of heating increased, the moisture (10.88 to 9.33 %), ash (5.42 to 3.84 %) and protein (7.01 to 4.00 %) rates in samples decreased while carbohydrates (74.05 to 77.53 %), fat (1.18 to 2.25 %) and fibres (11.77 to 15.78 %) rates increased. In addition, the increase in temperature and heating time has led to significant decreases in the levels of calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, iron and copper, reducing considerably the spice's contribution of these minerals to a diet. Furthermore, it was observed that total phenols and flavonoids contents, and DPPH free radical scavenging activity increased significantly with increase in heating time from 10 to 30 minutes at the tested temperatures. In contrast, total tannins (55.11 to 32.26 mg /100g), phytates (9.99 to 5.38 mg/100g) and oxalates (300.62 to 171.53 mg/100g) contents in samples decreased significantly with increase in heating temperature and time in comparison to unheated samples. It is therefore suggested that cooking of this spice should be done within the shortest possible temperature and time to retain most of its nutrients or around 100°C for an optimum time in order to obtain significant antioxidant effect.

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