Prebiotics (including galacto-oligosaccharides) are regarded as non-digestible food ingredient that beneficially affects the host by selectively stimulating the growth and/or activity of one or a limited number of bacteria in the colon, and thus improve host health. They impart several important physiological effects depending on the composition and/or balance and activities of beneficial microflora i.e. Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus. Recent findings propose that mal-nutrition and its synergistic relationship with preventable infectious diseases causes 21% deaths around the globe and disability adjusted life years in children's below five years of age. Children who are fed on infant formula are more susceptible to infectious diseases than breast fed children. Keeping in view the need for the improvement of child health through improving the immunity, the present research project was designed. The study was conducted in three different phases. In the first phase, characterization of galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) was done. During the second phase blending of oligomate with all-purpose wheat flour at 12, 24, 36 and 48% (w/w) levels were done to prepare prebiotic fortified-wheat-flour cookies at 1, 2, 3 and 4 %. The cookies thus prepared were physically and organoleptically evaluated for the selection of optimum level of prebiotic fortification and the best treatment selected along with control was used for efficacy studies. During third stage, efficacy of GOS fortified cookies were evaluated on selected normal 2-5 years young children. During efficacy study 40 healthy children were recruited and divided into two groups. First group was taken as control and was given unfortified cookies whereas second group was given galacto-oligosaccharides fortified 8 cookies per day. Each individual subject was given GOS for 40 days. Urine and stool samples were collected at 0, 20 and 40 days of study for analysis. Weekly follow-up visits were scheduled and consisted of a detailed physical examination and other health and diet related information through pre-structured interviews and body measurements. The data obtained was statistically analyzed to check statistical significance and to compare means. Significant results were obtained for physical and chemical properties of oligomate. Physical and chemical analysis of cookies also showed significant results however within the treatment non-significant results were observed as well as the storage study also showed non-significant results. The analysis of variance shows the mean squares for colony forming units. The mean squares (2.53) and p-value (0.014*) for groups on various diets showed significant results. However, Mean squares for interval and the interaction between groups and study interval showed non-significant
The means show significant results for groups with respect to study interval. The highest mean value is seen for fortified cookies (8.48a) showing that the colony forming units have been significantly increased and the lowest was seen for control group (7.82c) in which opposite results were seen that is the colony forming units decreased instead of increasing. These results were in line with the study of Piirainen et al. (2008) who evaluated the effects of galacto-oligosaccharide.