Research

Prototypes for New Salmon Baby Food Products II

FY2005 Final Report

Problem: The image of Alaska wild salmon image is of a natural product from the pristine Alaska waters. In addition salmon has significant health benefits due to high concentrations of long chain omega - 3 fatty acids. However, there are no baby food products in the market place made from Alaska salmon.

Approach: The initial phase of this project involved analyzing the utility of employing salmon processing byproduct hydrolysate as a baby food ingredient. The purpose of the second phase of this project was to analyze the development of pureed baby foods for infants and chunked foods for toddlers from Alaska salmon. These baby food products were made from both sockeye and pink salmon skinless fillets - with and without bones. They were extensively characterized in terms of their nutritional properties, shelf stability and consumer acceptance. Other value added salmon products to be developed also include dried and powdered salmon protein ingredients. Currently, a variety of toddler jarred dinners containing fish are available in Asia. In addition, much of the world production of infant formula contains significant concentrations of omega 3 fatty acids, although this is not the case in the US. Our major goal was to be able to evaluate salmon as an ingredient in baby foods and salmon oil as a source for the omega 3 fatty acids.

Results: Gerber Baby Foods has marketed two different jarred baby food products containing wild Alaskan salmon.

Presentations & Publications:
Lakshmanan, R Lee, Y., & Brewer, S. 2009. Effect of food matrix and heat treatment on the rheological properties of salmon-based baby food. Journal of Food Engineering (2009), doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2009.06.004
Lakshmanan, R., Desantos, FA., Smiley, S., Bechtel, PJ. & Brewer, MS. 2009. Effect of storage on quality characteristics of infant food puree manufactured from red and pink, boneless and bone-in salmon. (In review). Journal of Food Quality.
De Santos, F., Lakshmanan, R., Smiley, S., Bechtel, PJ. & Brewer, MS. 2009. Effect of salmon type, presence of bone, and processing on quality characteristics of salmon infant food puree. (In review) Journal of Sensory Studies

Contact person: Dr. Scott Smiley email: smiley@sfos.uaf.edu.