Nutrient Enhancement of Ready to Eat Traditional Foods with Garden Cress Seeds

Garden cress has been considered as an important nutritional and medicinal plant in India due to its health promoting properties. The seeds are rich in macro as well as micronutrients. It can be said like garden cress seeds are packed with power of nutrients. Being highly nutritious, the seeds can be supplemented in traditional recipes to improve nutritional status of population. So, the present investigation was carried out to bring enhancement of nutrients in ready to eat traditional foods with the supplementation of garden cress seeds. Four traditional foods viz. pinni, panjiri, laddu and burfi were developed using standard methods which were treated as control and for experimental recipes, 10 % garden cress seeds were supplemented in the standard methods. Both control and experimental recipes were subjected to nutritional analysis. The results showed that nutritional value increased with the supplementation of garden cress seeds. Burfi was found with highest protein, fat and iron content while pinni was found with highest fibre, calcium and zinc content. In vitro digestibility for starch and protein was found to be decreased and antinutritional factors were found to be increased with the addition of garden cress seeds supplementation.