John O. Akingbala

Utilization of Cassava for Food

Cassava (Manihot esculenta Cranz and/or Manihot utillisima Phol) has been processed into food products worldwide for several hundred years. The traditional methods of processing cassava roots into food have been adapted to suit the attributes of the plant such as root yield, spoilage, cyanide content, nutrient content, and process-ability. With increasing population, increasing demand of consumers for better quality foods and increasing new uses for cassava, indigenous methods of cultivation and processing of cassava have been transformed by modern scientific knowledge for use in industrial operations. Cassava is basically made into fermented and unfermented products. Fermented products include cassava bread, fermented cassava flour, fermented starch, fufu, lafun, akyeke (or attieke), agbelima, and gari, whereas the unfermented products include tapioca, cassava chips and pellets, unfermented cassava flour and starch. New food uses of cassava include as flour in gluten free or gluten-reduced products (e.g., bread, biscuits, etc.). This review highlights progress made in the utilization of cassava for food; challenges, process and raw material development issues and improvement achieved in nutritional delivery of cassava foods. Also, progress made in the storage, presentation, packaging, etc., of cassava foods are discussed.

Assessing Thermal Inactivation of Salmonella on Cooked Broiler Chicken Carcasses in Trinidad and Tobago

Salmonella, zoonotic bacteria normally present in broiler chicken flocks, are a major cause of food-borne ill- ness of known aetiology in Trinidad and Tobago, and in the wider English speaking Caribbean. Although cooking is re- garded as an acceptable method for thermal destruction of these pathogens, consumption of undercooked, and re- contaminated cooked broiler meat remains a common mode of transmission to humans. Since the proportion of under- cooked chicken is largely unknown, an assessment of various cooking methods would serve to prioritise intervention strategies that are required to ensure food safety. Cooking time and temperature for fried, boiled, baked, and grilled cook- ing methods, determined from survey and sampling methods, and D-values from published data were inputs into a modi- fied model. The model was constructed in a Microsoft Excel TM workbook, and simulated using @risk add-in computer software, 100,000 iterations, and Latin Hypercube Sampling. Thermal inactivation of Salmonella on broiler chicken meat occurred during boiling (0%) and frying (0%), but Salmonella survived baking (0.001%) and grilling (0.012%). Differ- ences in the expected value were due to differences in cooking time, temperature, environment, and size of broiler chicken cuts. Air, the heat transfer medium for both baking and grilling may be the most important factor linked to inadequately cooked broiler chicken carcasses.