Development and Consumer Evaluation of Aerva lanata Incorporated Ready to Eat (RTE) Snack

Nowadays there is an increased demand for the RTE and RTC foods due to changed lifestyle, their convenience, price, taste, appearance and attractiveness. Aerva lanata is a traditional green leaf vegetable. It has cultural, food and medicinal value. Both jowar and Aerva lanata has good nutritional value. The main objective of the study is to incorporate dried leaf powder into jowar chakli at different formulations and to evaluate for sensory and consumer acceptance. Initially, the collected leaves from Nalgonda district of Telangana state were blanched, dried and incorporated to jowar chakli and analysed for sensory evaluation. Based on the sensory, 10% leaf powder incorporated jowar chakli was selected. The taste of the test sample was highly accepted than the control sample. The best selected formulation was further analysed for consumer acceptance by randomly selected 100 members from different age groups. The results of the study found that the cost, colour, texture, flavour and overall acceptability of the product was well accepted. Inclusion of traditional green into the trending products adds variety, improves nutritional value, reduces the raw material cost and good economic value.