Researcher comes up with diabetics meal flour

Diabetics may soon have something to smile about as one of their major fears is the difficulty in sticking to their diet regimen, forsaking their favourite dishes especially as it concerns carbohydrates.

Dr Henrietta Ogbunugafor

A lecturer/researcher in the Department of Applied Biochemistry, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Dr. Henrietta Ogbunugafor has come up with what she calls Diabetic meal flour which she says will satisfy the cultural eating habit of swallowing.
In this chat with Vanguard Learning in Awka, she speaks on what led to the research and the advantages of her formulation over others, noting that all the raw materials are available locally.
Excerpts:
What informed the research?
The formulation has to do with solving one of the problems of our immediate community. One of the main problems facing the society today is increased prevalence of diabetes, with the associated amputations, stroke and death. So in this research work, I tried to solve this problem using some tubers around us that are found to have the ability to lower blood glucose.
Diabetics meal (fufu) flour is a functional food product developed from two local edible plants. I formulated the tubers into a type of powder to make fufu in order to satisfy the swallowing habit of our people because that is one of the major problems of some diabetics; they just cannot afford not to swallow so I was trying to create something for them.
Advantages over other anti-diabetic products:
It is non-synthetic, provides basic nutritional and therapeutic needs, satisfies cultural eating habit of swallowing, lowers blood glucose levels, high fiber content, reduces appetite, controls body weight and elevates high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or good cholesterol. Therefore, it has nutritive as well as therapeutic benefits based on research results.
We are working to adapt these tubers to suit the Nigerian condition and make it possible to replace things like our usual cassava fufu, pounded yam, garri, etc. We hope it will eventually be in the market soon.
Availability:
The tubers are very common here but they are often neglected. The good news is that the raw materials – plants and packaging materials – are all cheap and available locally.

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