THESE UNIQUE El Hassane Kéhien-Piho TOU - Nutridev

942 E.H. Tou et al. / Food Chemistry 100 (2007) 935–943
some conclusions to be drawn about the metabolic activity
of LABs involved in the different process combinations.
Two stages were distinguished in the control and inoculated
experiments (CI and CMI) but not in CM. The first
stage corresponded roughly to the first half of the total fermentation
time, when there was a simultaneous increase in
both ethanol and lactic acid concentrations, and the second
stage when there was no longer an increase in the concentration
of ethanol, while the increase in lactic acid continued.
The first stage indicates that both homo and
heterofermentative LABs and possibly yeasts could be
active, and the second stage that mainly homofermentative
LAB could still be active in conditions, where the pH is
very low. This variation in metabolic pattern is consistent
with general descriptions given for many plant-based fermented
foods in relation to temporal variations displayed
by the different LAB species during the course of fermentation
(Ampe, ben Omar, Moizan, Wacher, & Guyot, 1999;
Brauman, Kéléké, Malonga, Miambi, & Ampe, 1996).
In the CI process combination, the implementation of
the processes of pre-cooking and inoculation by back-slopping
had a small positive effect on the gruel ED which
reached 62 kcal/100 g for a sweetened gruel at a Bostwick
flow of 120 mm/30 s, against 39 kcal/100 g for a sweetened
control gruel. This could be explained by the fact that gelatinization
during pre-cooking makes the starch more susceptible
to a slight amylolysis by amylolytic lactic acid
bacteria (ALAB). The counts of lactic acid microflora in
fermented slurries indeed showed the presence of ALABs
with an ALAB/LAB ratio of 0.06 (Table 1). Similar studies
reported the presence of ALABs in many cereal-based fermented
foods (Diaz-Ruiz, Guyot, Ruiz-Teran, Morlon-
Guyot, & Wacher, 2003; Johansson, Sanni, Lonner, &
Molin, 1995; Sanni, Morlon-Guyot, & Guyot, 2002) and
the ability of their a-amylase to hydrolyze raw starch
(Rodriguez-Sanoja et al., 2000). However, it is shown here
that even if the gelatinized starch did favour amylolysis by
ALAB amylases, natural fermentation was not efficient
enough to reduce the viscosity of the gruel enough to
obtain gruels with appropriate ED values.
The gruel obtained using the CMI process combination
had an ED of about 82 kcal/100 g after sugar had been
added. This ED is significantly higher (P