Agriculture & Food, Volume 4, 2016

Abstract: Modern lifestyle has fundamentally changed eating habits around the world, leading to a substantial increase in demand for ready to eat meals, therefore, these meals have a significant impact on consumer health. A balanced nutritional formulation of ready to eat meals is especially important because the intake of fat within European population is high, while carbohydrate intake low. Ready to eat meals, which are available on the market at the moment, often contain too much sugar, salt and fat, while dietary fibre in these meals can be found in considerably small quantities. Dietary fibre plays an important role in various physiological processes and can prevent the risk of several diseases. The study aims to develop enjoyable food products with high fibre content and search for alternative sources of fibre to improve the nutritional value of new foods. Five types of ready to eat meals were prepared for this study: potatoes, potatoes with chicken fillet, potatoes with amaranth, potatoes with quinoa, and potatoes with bulgur. Ready to eat meals were filled in laminated polyethylene terephthalate / aluminium / polyamide / polypropylene (PET/ALU/PA/PP) pouches, hermetically sealed under vacuum and thermally treated at 120 ± 0.5 °C for 10 minutes. After processing, fibre content, moisture and hardness was determined in all ready to eat meal samples. The results showed that adding fibre-rich ingredients to potatoes increases the functionality of ready to eat meals.