Recipes and nutritional value of dishes prepared from green-leafy vegetables in an urban district of Antananarivo (Madagascar)

Abstract

The recipes of 50 multi-ingredient dishes consumed by the population in an urban district were noted down. The nutritional value was determined as well as the cook value of the dishes in order to evaluate the severity of the thermal treatment. The recipes were simple and involved steps such as boiling, mixing, and cutting. Fibre contents were rather low except when the leaf stems were included. All the dishes had very high β-carotene content (15.8–25.0 mg/100 g dry matter) and retinol activity equivalent (RAE) (1.3–2.3 mg RAE/100 g dry matter) because of the high proportion of fresh leafy vegetables (from 41.2% to 58.8% of the total dry matter of the ingredients). When meat was added to the preparation, the micronutrient content (iron, zinc, and retinol) was not increased significantly. In three dishes, a positive correlation was found between the thermal treatment severity and the 13-cis-β-carotene amount.

Keywords::

• Recipes
• iron
• zinc
• β-carotene
• retinol
• cooking

Declaration of interest: The present work was supported by a grant from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement and by the CORUS program (Qualisann project) of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.