Table 1. Percentage of moisture loss in fried banana chips after dipping in sugar solution
Figure 1. Bar graph showed percentage of moisture of banana chips before and after frying
three different concentrations of sugar solutions were used. The driving force for water removal is the concentration gradient between the solution and the intracellular fluid. As the concentration of sugar used for dipping was increased, the driving force for water removal was also increased and resulted in low moisture content of the banana chips.
Fat analysis The research continues with the analysis of oil uptake in banana chips after frying. From Figure 2, the highest fat content was control banana chips (0.66%) while the lowest fat content was banana chip dips in 12 g of sugar solution (0.54%). Research by Mehta (2001) showed that fat content is largely determined by the moisture content of the food. Frying is the process of cooking foods using oil as the heating medium. In this research, deep frying techniques had been used to fry the banana chips. In deep-frying, banana chips are immersed in the oil at 180◦C for 5 minutes. During deep frying, water in the crust will evaporate and move out of the food. The banana chips with high moisture has higher amount of fat content after frying rendering chips oily in appearance thus affecting the overall preference. While a lower moisture content of banana chip led to less oil absorption, resulting in chips lacking oily taste. Similar results were also found by Smith (1951). Lamberg (1990) stated that when potato chips are fried in oil at a high temperature, the moisture would boil explosively. This may result in cell wall bursting and damage and consequently, the formation
of capillary holes and voids. Thus, oil adheres to the surfaces of the chips and is also absorbed into the pores or the voids in the porous slices. This is proved by data in Figure 1 and Figure 2. The control banana chips has the highest moisture content before and after frying (44.56% and 5.95 % respectively) has the highest fat content which is 0.66%. The relationship of oil uptake and moisture loss of the fried banana chips has been investigated by Southern, C. et al., (2000). The sugar dipped chips has much lower oil content than control samples. It was found that the sweet pre-treatment before frying is important in reducing the oil content in the chips.
Colour analysis Next, for colour analysis, all fried banana chips were analyzed using chromameter to obtain the value of L*, a* and b*. Data from chromameter was interpreted using ANOVA to determine is there any significant difference in colour between the four fried banana chips. The alpha value is set at 0.05. If the p-value is less than or equal to the alpha then the null hypothesis is rejected and there is a significant difference in colour between the four banana chip samples. All banana chips samples has < 50 for L* value thus this indicates all samples are dark. For b* scale, a positive value indicates yellow and a negative value indicates blue and from the analysis, all samples have positive values for b* and indicates all banana chips have yellow color. The p-value for lightness (L*) is 0.426 and the p-value for yellowness (b*) is 0.468. This shows that the null hypothesis was accepted and there was no significant difference in lightness and yellowness of all four fried banana chips.
Sensory evaluation Sensory evaluation is a scientific discipline that analyses and measures human responses to the composition of food and drink, e.g. appearance, touch,