Maize snacks produced from

The machinery has been borrowed from the plastics industry. An early single screw extruder was used in the 1940s to produce a snack product from maize grits but the operational advantage of twin screw machines was demonstrated later. It appears that they are more efficient in mass transport, less heat is dissipated, and therefore heat transfer can be better regulated by barrel heating (Lo et al. 1998). 

The alkaline cooking or nixtamalization of whole maize has become important in the United States and other parts of the world dne to the increase in popularity of Mexican foods. Three basic types of prodncts are indnstrially produced from alkaline or lime-cooked maize table or soft tortillas, com chips, and tortilla chips (Sema-Saldivar et al. 1990). Corn and tortilla chips are primarily produced and con-snmed in developed countries, where they have an important share within the salted snack food market, whereas table tortillas constitnte the staple food for large groups of people in developing Latin American countries. These prodncts can be produced... 

Corn chips Snack food produced from nixtamalized maize. The lime-cooked maize is ground into a dough that is extruded into chips and deep-fat fried. The resulting corn chips are usually salted and flavored. Com chips contain about 36% oil. 

Extrusion has found wide application in the production of snack foods and breakfast cereals from maize, as well as producing textured soya proteins. Extrusion technology should be investigated as a means of preparing novel textured proteins from animal sources. 

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