Microbial And Antioxidant Analysis of Mint Chewable Gummies Incorporated with Moringa oleifera, Syzygium aromaticum and Plectranthus amboinicus

Chewable gummies have attracted particular interested fortheir sweet taste and chewy nature due to the presence of additives, the excessive consumption of which may result in health issues. In the present work, three treatments consisting of 10% selected herbs (Moringa oleifera), cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) and Cuban oregano (Plectranthus amboinicus) were incorporated into chewable gummies to formulate the ingredients and were assessed for their antimicrobial activity, antioxidant activity and phenolic content. Chewable gummies incorporated with Moringa yield the highest zone of inhibition against Bacillus subtilis at 21.3 ± 1.5 mm, compared to when tested against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Salmonella Typhi using the Kirby-Bauer method. The incorporation of chewable gummies with cloves yielded 3.37 ± 1.32 log CFU/ml of microbial count while the other treatments were describedas “too many to count” (TNTC) when tested on MRS agar for Lactobacillus spp. growth. The highest level of radical scavenging action is found in Moringa at 82.66% for DPPH assay and possesses a mean of (1.1688 ± 0.0535) nm that is significantly lower (p < 0.05) than the control (3.2686 ± 0.0863) nm. Meanwhile, the highest total phenolic content when tested using the Folin–Ciocalteu method is recorded at 59.64 ± 0.0060 mg GAE/g for Moringa, which is significantly lower (p < 0.05) than cloves at 45.38 ± 0.0400 mg GAE/g. The findings suggest that chewable gummies incorporated with Moringa oleifera are the most accepted as a possible food for product development, followed by Plectranthus amboinicus and Syzygium aromaticum. Future research is required to improve the formulation of chewable gummies, as well as analyzing the sensory acceptability of newly formulated chewable gummies.