Ready-to-Eat high-energy food paste stability and shelf life prediction in different packaging materials

The ready-to-eat high-energy/therapeutic food (RTE-TF) paste is a homogenous mixture of peanut paste, edible oil, icing sugar, cereals and legumes flour, milk powder, and vitamin-mineral premix, and it is used for the management of Severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Accelerated storage (90% RH, 40 degrees C) of RTE-TF paste was conducted for 180 days to study its stability and shelf-life. In this study, three different multilayer packaging materials were used such as 40 mu m metallic foil laminated low-density polyethylene (ML), 110 mu m metallic foil laminated low-density polyethylene (MFL), and 125 mu m aluminium foil laminated low-density polyethylene (AFL). Moisture gain (MG), water activity (aw), peroxide value (PV), total colour change (Delta E ), hardness, oil separation (AOS), and vitamin C content for the RTE-TF paste packaged in AFL, MFL, and ML were determined with storage days. The rapidly deteriorating changes were observed in the RTE-TF paste packaged in ML pouches compared to AFL and MFL. The ML pouch showed acceptable desired characteristics of paste till 60 days, while AFL and MFL could extend it to 120 days. Therefore, the AFL and MFL pouches can be used to pack the RTE-TF paste to keep it in an acceptable form with an extended shelf life than ML pouches.