Moringa olifera leaves powder contains anti-oxidants, anti-inflammatory compounds, phenolics, flavonoids and complete protein with essential amino acids. The high moisture content in fresh leaves and bitter taste upon drying make these leaves highly perishable and difficult to swallow in raw form, respectively.  The Chewable Moringa Fruity Tablets is a unique formulation of Moringa oleifera leaves which is easily chewable, nutritious, natural, economical and can be served as food supplement for all age group of peoples. This innovation utilizes fruit powder as natural binder. The standardization of invented tablet was done according to the prescribed parameters of Food and Drug Administration of United State (FDA) and International Pharmacopeia for disintegrating tablets. This innovation was developed to promote Moringa oleifera leaves as a low cost multi-vitamin supplement which may fulfill missing multivitamins level in food for the unaffordable community of people throughout the world. If an adult takes five tablets on daily basis, these tablets can fulfil 100% RDA of vitamin A (β-carotene) from a pure natural source.

Issue

Moringa oleifera leaves contains lots of nutrients and anti-oxidants which make these leaves are well known as super food. Moringa oleifera is the most nutrient-rich plant discovered so far. It provides a rich and rare combination of nutrients, amino acids, antioxidants, antiaging and anti-inflammatory properties used for nutrition and healing. In Malaysia, moringa leaves and pods have been used for cooking curries and local dishes. The plant is particularly famous amongst Indian community in their cooking, and most Indian houses in Malaysia has planted this tree for ease of consumption and other usages.

Since 1998, the World Health Organization has been promoting Moringa as an alternative to imported food supplies to treat malnutrition. Moringa has been used in the traditional medicine for centuries in many cultures around the world, for skin infections, anemia, anxiety, asthma, bronchitis, chest congestion, cholera, conjunctivitis, cough, diarrhea, eye and ear infections, fever, glandular, swelling, headaches, abnormal blood pressure, hysteria, pain in joints, pimples, psoriasis, respiratory disorders, scurvy, sore throat, sprain, tuberculosis, for intestinal worms, lactation ,diabetes and pregnancy.

The taste of these leaves is extremely bitter due to which it is not possible to eat them in raw form. The present invention solves this problem by converting Moringa leaves powder into chewable tablets. To mask the bitterness of Moringa leaves, fruit powder was used as taste masking agent. A well-known tablet manufacturing process, direct compression was used to form these tablets.

Advantages 

1. This tablets containing pure Moringa leaves along with natural excipients. Available multivitamin supplements are costly and prepared by synthetic origin and has to go through many unit operations and thermal treatments.
2. The formulation is prepared by simple manufacturing method (direct compression) and overall cost of tablet in lab scale is also very low (RM 0.10/tablet) as compared to available multivitamin and supplements available in the market.
3. This tablet is a herbal-based multivitamin orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) provides a tablet with optimal hardness, rapidly disintegrates without water, within about 60 seconds and friability less than 1%.
4. Pure Moringa leaves powder have very bitter taste and difficult to swallow. The invented formulation of Moringa ODTs masked the bitterness of Moringa leaves powder and made it palatable and mouth pleasant.
5. Consumers, particularly children that have problem to swallow tablets can consumes the OTD easily as its taste just like a candy due to natural superdisintegrant (fruit powder), vanilla flavour and cooling effect of mannitol.
6. The common technology used synthetic superdisintegrant to dissolve rapidly while in this formulation, pure fruit powder was used as superdisintegrant which also acts as nutrients and natural flavouring agent.
7. The formation is an ideal orally disintegrating tablet formulation which rapidly disintegrates in the oral cavity dispersing the contents and has a pleasant taste and smooth cooling mouth-feel (no grittiness), and complete release occurs in the gastrointestinal tract.
8. For industrial/commercial scale, these tablets having sufficient hardness to be suitable for packaging in High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) bottles and blisters packs for storage, transportation and distribution.
9. Non-toxic: The maximum dosage was tested on rabbits to analyze its effect on growth rate, hemoglobin and toxicity. No toxic effect was found during histopathology tests on liver and kidney samples of rabbits treated with maximum level of dosage (250 mg/kg body weight/day).
10. Pre and post-compression analysis showed that it is easy to handle, store (≤33% R.H and 40°C), packing, transport, convenient preparation and suitable for all type of consumers.

Assoc Prof. Ir. Dr. Yus Aniza Yusof

Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia,

Date of Input: 11/07/2018 | Updated: 11/07/2018 | asrizam