Consumer Perceptions and In Vitro Anti-Inflammatory Activities of Cookies Produced from Wheat and Soybean Composite Flour Blends

Abstract

Cookies offered several important advantages including; wide consumption, relatively long shelf life, good eating quality, highly palatable and acceptable in most countries. This study thus, investigated the quality of cookies produced from wheat-soybean composite flour blends at different ratios. The soybean seeds were thoroughly processed, milled, sieved and mixed with the commercial wheat flour. Four blends namely: WSY 1 (100:0), WSY 2 (30:70%), WSY 3 (40:60%) and WSY 4 (50:50%) (wheat:soybean), respectively were prepared and later used to bake cookies. The proximate, anti-inflammatory (protein denaturation and cyclooxygenase inhibition) activities of the composite cookies were examined while panelists were assigned to assess the cookie samples. The results of the proximate composition showed that the composite flour technology had significant (p<0.05) positive effects on the cookies. The anti-inflammatory results showed the inhibitory potentials of the cookies against the cyclo-oxygenase activities at low concentration (IC₅₀; 12.85 mg/ml, respectively) when compared to sodium diclofenac (18.60 mg/ml), a well-known and common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug.  No panelist showed a total dislike for the taste of any of the samples. The added kidney bean seeds flours showed no significant (p<0.05) effect on the acceptability and preference of the samples. Hence, it is possible to produce cookies from wheat-soybean composite flours loaded with high protein contents to serve as effective anti-inflammatory agents (low IC₅₀).