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 Infant food is a worldwide market that has been expanding in recent years. Clextral’s offer for baby food is two-fold: instant flours produced by twin screw extrusion and cereal-based baby food produced on Afrem brand equipment.
Instant flours
Instant baby-foods are flour mixes that have at least 25 % of cereals, but generally the amount of cereals is around 60 to 80 % of the final formulation. They need to be hydrated with water or milk in order to be consumed. The obtained porridge or mush is then destined to the babies (from 4 months old) and initiate them to their first solid food but also to different savours and textures.
These infant flours, and more particularly their cereal base, have to receive a thermal or thermo-mechanical treatment in order to transform the raw starch granules (not digestible) into swelled and broken starch granules (digestible).
The rice is the cereal commonly used because of its high digestibility and its low allergy incidence. However, other cereals can be used such as corn, wheat, barley, oat and tapioca. The recipes also have other extra ingredients such as milk powder, sugars, minerals and vitamins in order to participate to a healthy growth and development of the babies.
The manufacturing of those infant flours by extrusion cooking consists in the transformation of the cereal base by a thermo-mechanical treatment. This treatment leads to the optimal gelatinisation of the starch but also to the sterilisation of the cereal base.
The control of the cooking is easily manageable by the operating conditions and easily adjustable to the optimum (full gelatinisation of the starch and without dextrinisation).
Cereal based baby food
Afrem-Clextral offers a solution for instant cereal foods. The product is easy to prepare, suits the palate of very young children and includes all the nutritional requirements ; a mixture of small (0,8 mm) balls of durum wheat flour and dehydrated powdered vegetables with added vitamins which may be eaten as a soup by adding milk or water.
The same product, without added vegetables instead using small quantities of tapioca semolina can be used in a sweet version too or used in cakes, gratins, soufflés, stuffings, etc., when creating more elaborated dishes than a simple soup.
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