ABSTRACT
Consumers are looking for foods that provide health, convenience, and taste at an affordable price. Ever-increasing population and urbanization mean high demand for staple foods; moreover, changing eating habits means more convenient foods. To address consumer demand, a key research priority in the food industry is the development of foods that promote health and wellness. Snack foods have become a signi“cant part of modern life and represent a distinct and consistently widening and changing group of food items (Riaz 2005). Extrusion is one of the most versatile operations available to the food industry for transforming ingredients into intermediate or “nished products. Extrusion technology provides a method to process raw ingredients on a large scale at a remarkably low cost. Extrusion “nds ever-increasing application in the food industry, such as the production of ready-to-eat cereals, pasta, snacks, pet food, “sh foods, and confectionary products, apart from its obvious applications in the plastics industry (Muthukumarappan and Karunanithy 2012).
