Soya fortified yorghurt – way forward to indigenous and probiotic product development for sustainable food security

Kenya is endowed with a wide variety of foods. However, there is need to fortify the locally available foods, especially for the vulnerable groups. Designing, creating and monitoring second generation products are prominent opportunities for biotechnology research which increasingly offer new and larger market sectors. This experimental research sought to enhance the deficient iron content in plain yoghurt by fortifying it with locally available ingredients (soya flour) and making use of fermenting action of live bacteria. The activity of live bacteria converts the lactose in the milk into lactic acid, which, because of its acidity, reacts causing the proteins in the milk to solidify. Soy is widely used for fortification of other foods, due to its high protein and iron content. This property was employed in the fortification of yoghurt. The findings of this research show how the nutritional and health value of home made plain yoghurt, by fortifying it with soya flour and culturing with starter containing probiotic bacteria, can be improved to increase specifically the protein and iron amounts in the yoghurt. Production of functional foods like probiotics should thus be encouraged, especially for food aid to deal with consequences of food insecurity like malnutrition.