Shelf Life Studies Of Fermented And Unfermented Snail Sauce

Shelf Life Studies Of Fermented And Unfermented Snail Sauce 

Chapter One

Introduction

Background Of The Study

Snails belong to the group of animals called mollusk, they have soft body usually covered by a dorsal shell composed mainly of calcium carbonate, they are very important source of food and products from snails belong to food stuff with high nutritional value containing food energy, high quality proteins, vitamins and minerals (Tremlova, 2001) snails are consumed by humans in almost all parts of the world and are increasingly playing important roles in human nutrition.

The African giant snail (Achachatina achatina), the vineyard snails (Helux pomata) and Helux locum are unconventional sources of meat (Sotelo et al., 1993). The snail meat is a major source of protein in the diet of some people living in the forest region of Nigeria. Snails are also consumed as a rare delicacy by many Nigerians living outside the forest region.

Unlike the conventional meat sources such as beef, mutton, and poultry, the snails have very low cholesterol and saturated fatty acids content (Ikeme, 1985) the consumption of snails therefore have nutritional benefits since cholesterol and saturated fatty acids have been implicated in coronary heart diseases and arteriosclerosis (Leisner and Gram, 2000).

Because of their feeding habits, snails may act as vectors of some parasitic diseases (Ariahu and Illori, 1993). Therefore snails require adequate processing in order to assure safety of the meat from public point of view. The processing options include freezing, irradiation, dehydration and canning. Canning of the snails hold the advantage of commercial sterility while offering the products in ready to eat forms. Such products would enjoy wider geographical distribution and long term preservation without dependence on power supply.

Among all these methods of processing and preserving of snail, snail based sauces is among but its shelf life was not evaluated. This work therefore intends to study the shelf life of snail sauce, helping to determine how long snail sauce would stay in the consumers shelf, widen the product variety and also satisfy those who would prefer snail sauce. It will also serve the purpose of spread on some confectionary.

1.2 Statement Of The Problem

Snails are enriched with nutrients necessary for life and provide health benefits. To widen the product variety of snail, satisfy those that would prefer snails in sauce, there is need for storing snail sauce their shelf life durability will help in determining its safety from public health point of view. This research study is precisely undertaken to study the shelf life of fermented and unfermented snail sauce.

1.3 Objective Of The Study

The general objective of the study is to carry out a shelf life study and evaluation of fermented and unfermented snail sauce, to meet this general objective, the study will focus on the following specific objectives:

To produce fermented and unfermented snail sauces

To conduct sensory evaluation on the snail sauces

To determine the microbial contaminants of the snails at different intervals (after processing, 14 days after storage).