Inventor: Amir Abdul Rahman Mohammed/Department of Food Science, College of agriculture, University of Baghdad
Abstract
Dates are one of the most sweet fruits with high sugars content, up to 81%, which is one of the important alternatives to sweets either as directly consume or substitute for artificial sweeteners , dates have unique characteristics and high nutritional value, it is an important source for minerals and vitamins , dates play important roles as food balanced , control blood sugar and lipids profile levels specially for patients, dates content polysaccharides and soluble fiber which they have an anti-tumor effect through their antioxidants activity , and promote bowel movement and stimulate growth of intestinal beneficial flora. Al-Zahdi is one of the most popular dates in Iraq , 60% of date palms tress are Zahdi, the production of this kind of dates was 55% of the total date production of Iraq in 2015 , 331,981 tons was produced in the same year . Most of it are used in conversion industries such as date syrup , ethanol or as feed for animals, that mean lost the high nutritional value food can be used for human nutrition , for all that, zahidi dates were used in manufacturing therapeutic sweet after the addition roasted sesame seeds and inulin as prebiotic source , the 9-point hedonic scale was adopted to determine these ratios that gave best results for sensory evaluation. the probiotics bacteria Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG and Lactobacillus plantarum were added individually for the sweet mixture, then its formed in one bite size and storage with control treatment “free of probiotics” in refrigerator temperature. The microbial tastes results of all treatments shown free of coliform bacteria while its shown a decrease in the number of yeasts and moulds until disappeared completely during the storage period, which lasted for six months compared with control, treatment which shown an increase of yeast and moulds , Probiotics treatments maintained high numbers of probiotics bacteria exceeding the acceptable limits for therapeutic products which informs 107 cfu\ml or gm. so creates a high impression for this probiotics sweet compared with fermented dairy probiotics products , which have a short shelf life. Probiotics date sweet kept on high sensory acceptance, during the storage period, especially the treatments containing Inulin, which showed preference in their sensory properties.