Quality assessment and in-vivo glycemic indices of snack bar from blends of plantain flour, soy meal and oat bran

Snack bars were produced in response to the growing demand for creative, processed, healthful, and convenient foods brought on by a lack of time for cooking and a growing awareness of health issues. The purpose of this study was to develop and assess the nutritional content, glycemic response in healthy human subjects, sensory and physical properties of snack bars from plantain, soy meal, rice-bran, and oat-bran flour. The flour samples were combined in the following manner: PSO (plantain 65%, soy meal 30%, and oat bran 5%); PSRO (plantain 60%, soy meal 30%, rice bran 5%, and oat bran 5%). The formulated snack bars had significantly higher contents of total ash (3.98–4.56%), crude fiber (5.41–6.68%) and crude protein (25.24–26.30%) compared to the control sample, which had 1.88, 3.31 and 3.98%, respectively. Moreover, the snack bars showed reduced glycemic index (37.66–38.82) and glycemic load (18.83–19.41) compared to the control 51.68 and 25.84, respectively. Sensory evaluation showed that there was no significant difference in overall acceptability between the produced snack bars and the commercial oat snack bar, but there was a significant difference (p < 0.05) in color, appearance, texture, aroma, and taste. Results showed that, in comparison to the control (COS), the produced snack bars (PSO and PSRO) have low glycemic indices and are high in crude fiber and protein. The snack bars' nutritional composition was improved by the addition of rice bran. The snack bar especially PSRO has potential to be used as functional diet to modulate blood sugar.