Karawila sandwiches anyone? The Industrial Technol-ogy Institute (ITI), as part of its effort to formulate different types of food with local raw materials, have developed a range of tasty food for children based on karawila or bitter gourd, ITI’s latest bulletin has reported.

The report said that the challenge was to prepare attractive, nutritious and tasty foods from karawila, a vegetable not popular with children due to its bitter taste.

The Sri Lanka Investors Commission required that the main ingredient for the product should be karawila, its nutritional value should not be destroyed and the expiry date experimentally identified.

It also required that the ingredients used must be quantified and preservatives added within constraints of quality standards.

Working within these guidelines, ITI staff has developed a sandwich spread prepared from karawila preserved in brine.

This preparation has won the first prize at the Grand Challenge Competition 2006 where the awards ceremony was held at the end of last year at the Presidential Secretariat.

ITI staff had also developed a nutritionally balanced burger-type meal with karawila together with rice and green gram. The burger, named "Karawila Super" has been developed using freezing as the preservation method.

This product shared the second prize in the competition with two other inventors, the ITI Bulletin reported.