Biological Evaluation of Infants Food Prepared from Cereals and Their Effects on Hematological Properties of Blood

Good nutrition is important for growing, developing and health keeping of infants. Therefore the aim of this research is to evaluate the complementary food prepared mainly from cereals for feeding infants aged from 4-6 months.
In this study 20 waning male Abino Swiss rats (aged 21-23 days) were used. The animals were divided into four groups each group consisting of 5 animals. Group l was a control that was feeding a standard diet containing 10% casein.
Groups 2-4 were feeding the same diet containing protein from different sources as follow : rice cerellac, wheat/date cerelac, and wheat supplemented with soy a protein isolate and fruits/vegetables cerelac respectively for 28 days.
During period of experiments the morphological changes and bioactivity of animals were noticed. After the experiment period protein efficiency ratio "PER" was estimated finally the animals were sacrificied and the
 
internal organs (Liver, heat, kidney, brain, lungs and spleen) were weighed and the hematological properties,of blood (WBC, RBC, HGB, HCT, MCV, MCH, MCHC and PLT) were also estimated we noticed change of hair appearance and decrease its intensity a round head and ears of animals group 2 (rice cerellac) only. The results indicated that group 4 (wheat protein and fruit/vege. Cerellac) heat the highest PER (3.67) value and group 3 (wheat/date cerellac) had the lowest PER value (2.16) while PER group 2 was about similar to PER of control group (2.5, 2.54). Considering percentage of internal organs, group 2 reported decreasing of liver, kidney and lungs whereas  group 3 reported increasing of heart and lungs comparing with control groups. All hematological properties of all experimental groups 2-4) were lower than control groups.
Generally and according the obtained results the best formula was that containing wheat and supplemented with protein, vegetable and fruit.