Development of Affordable Vegetable-Based Snack Food Recipes for Grade School and High School Students
The research was focused on the development of vegetable-based snack recipes using affordable vegetables such as squash, sweet potato and some leafy vegetables as its main ingredients, that would be affordable and acceptable to school children. Acceptability of the products developed was determined by conducting consumer survey with 200 grade school children of the Maharlika Village Elementary School in Taguig City. It is expected that the products developed could provide parents and schools convenient, low cost, healthy options snack foods that could help address problem in malnutrition and nutrient deficiencies. After a series of formulation of different recipes, three (3) recipes were the most acceptable based on food tasting evaluation using the nine-point hedonic scale, namely, vegetable burger (squash bun with mixed vegetable patty), squash tart and sweet potato has brown. The snack food samples with high preference and acceptability were analyzed for its nutritional value. The acceptability and preference of the elementary students were determined through consumer testing of the most preferred snack food samples. Product costing of each of the most preferred snack food samples was computed to determine its affordability and compare the cost with the prices of the snacks sold in school canteen.
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