M. Oleifera Case Study

Presently, Consumers are rather conservative and conscious in accepting entirely new ingredients and products, and prefer to look for new benefits in more or less familiar products (Jongen and Meulenbery, 2005). However, the demands of consumers keep changing from time to time and these demands range from basic considerations such as improving food safety, shelf-life and reducing wastage to demands for increasingly sophisticated foods having special characteristics in terms of nutritional value, palatability and convenience. Today, innovation in food technology plays crucial role in translating nutrition information into consumer products to produce new health food ingredients and added specific nutrient or functional ingredients (Hsieh and
oleifera were found among the most promising species according to their high antioxidant activity, high contents of micronutrients (Table 1) and phytochemicals, processing properties. M. oleifera leaves are a good source of nutrition and exhibit anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, anti-ulcer, anti-atherosclerotic and anti-convulsant activities (Chumark et al, 2008; DanMalam et al, 2001; Dahiru et al, 2006). The leaves of M. oleifera can be eaten fresh, cooked, or stored as a dried powder for many months reportedly without any major loss of its nutritional value (Arabshahi et al, 2007; Fahey, 2005). For example, fresh leaves are picked, shade dried, ground to a powder, and then stored for later as a food flavouring or additive. Moringa leaves contain ten times the vitamin A content of carrots, 17 times the calcium content of milk, 15 times the potassium content of bananas, 25 times the iron content of spinach, nine times the protein content of yogurt, and much more vitamin C than in oranges (Manzoor et al., 2007). Leaves rich in biologically active carotenoids and tocopherols and have a health promoting potential in maintaining a balanced diet and preventing free-radical damage that can initiate many illnesses (Smolin and Grosvenor, 2007). In addition to the provitamins, Moringa leaves are also considered a rich source of minerals (Gupta et al, 1989), polyphenols (Bennett et al, 2003), flavonoids (Siddhuraju and Becker, 2003; Lako et al, 2007), alkaloids and proteins (Solivia
oleifera seeds showed 67.9% oleic acid in the solvent extract and 70.0% in the enzyme extracts (Abdulkarima et al, 2005). Other prominent fatty acids in Moringa oil include palmitic (7.8% and 6.8%), stearic (7.6% and 6.5%), and behenic (6.2% and 5.8%) acids for the solvent and enzyme-extracted oils, respectively (Abdulkarim et al, 2005). Due to the high monounsaturated to saturated fatty acid ratio, Moringa seed oil could be considered an acceptable substitute for highly monounsaturated oils such as olive oil (Tsaknis and Lalas, 2002). Oils with high amounts of monounsaturated (oleic type) fatty acids are desirable due to an association with decreased risk of coronary heart disease (Abdulkarim et al,