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Cereals and bread from Sudan

Nasha (Sudanese fermented sorghum infant porridge)نشا

Nasha is a thin fermented porridge made in Sudan from whole-grain sorghum flour and used as a weaning food for infants and small children. The flour is fermented and then cooked. A 1986 feeding trial found it a satisfactory weaning food when properly cooked and eaten with small amounts of a good source of lysine.

Fully documentedCereals and bread

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo nasha recipe with amounts was found.
Whole-grain sorghum flour[graham1986]
Water
Start
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What changes: Whole sorghum flour is stirred into water

Step 1 of 4
Mix sorghum flour and water
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactobacillus
Streptococcus
Candida
Saccharomyces

Output: thin batter.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Nasha is a thin fermented porridge made in Sudan from whole-grain sorghum flour and used as a weaning food for infants and small children. The flour is fermented and then cooked. A 1986 feeding trial found it a satisfactory weaning food when properly cooked and eaten with small amounts of a good source of lysine. Lactobacillus species and Streptococcus species do most of the fermenting.

What makes this one different

FAO's chapter on sorghum and millet foods lists nasha with the thin porridges, aceda with the thick porridges and kisra with the fermented breads. For comparison only, a laboratory study of the related kisra batter (sorghum flour and water 1:2 w/v, 30 °C, 24 h) saw the pH fall from 5.95 to 3.95 [mohammed1991].

Related ferments

Variants

  • Drum-dried nashaDried on a drum and cooked before it was fed to children in the 1986 trial; two children ate it without further cooking and its biological value was much lower.
  • Freeze-dried nashaUsed in the same feeding trial and cooked before eating.

Safety

Cook nasha well. In a 1986 trial with recovering malnourished children, cooked nasha supplied 61 % of the diet's calories; children absorbed 73 ± 5 % of its nitrogen, less than from casein (86 ± 3 %), and drum-dried nasha eaten without cooking had a much lower biological value. Adding a little lysine-rich food improved it. WHO lists sorghum among grains regularly contaminated with aflatoxins, says most mould toxins survive food processing and advises throwing out grain that looks mouldy, discoloured or shrivelled [who-mycotoxins]. Cooking does not reliably remove that risk, so check the grain first, above all for a child's food.

Hazards the sources name: Klebsiella pneumoniae and Enterobacter cloacae, found during kisra batter fermentation.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Process times
The sources we found give no figure for how long any of its steps take.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [graham1986] Graham G.G., MacLean W.C., Morales E., Hamaker B.R., Kirleis A.W., Mertz E.T., Axtell J.D. 1986, Digestibility and utilization of protein and energy from nasha, a traditional Sudanese fermented sorghum weaning food, Journal of Nutrition 116(6):978–984 (abstract)paper
  2. [mohammed1991] Mohammed S.I., Steenson L.R., Kirleis A.W. 1991, Isolation and characterization of microorganisms associated with the traditional sorghum fermentation for production of Sudanese kisra, Applied and Environmental Microbiology 57(9):2529–2533paper
  3. [adebo2020] Adebo O.A. 2020, African sorghum-based fermented foods, past, current and future prospects, Nutrients 12(4):1111 (table of products and microbes, citing Graham et al. 1986)paper
  4. [who-mycotoxins] WHO, Mycotoxins fact sheet (2 October 2023)gov
  5. [fao-sorghum] FAO 1995, Sorghum and millets in human nutrition, FAO Food and Nutrition Series 27, chapter Culinary preparations (nasha as a thin fermented sorghum porridge of the Sudan)gov