Judul: Product development of coconut palm sugar enriched with CPO and RPO as alternative food to overcome vitamin a deficiency
Abstrak: Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is still prevalent in Indonesia which can not be solved after even prevention efforts. VAD is an important cause of blindness and premature death and is widely prevalent amongst women and children. Vitamin A deficiency also plays an important role on reducing immune function and will impact on increasing morbidity and mortality. Red palm oil (RPO) and crude palm oil (CPO) is the richest naturally occurring source of β-carotene, a carotenoids that the human body can convert into usable vitamin A (retinol). Addition of red palm oil on palm sugar is one of the alternatives food-based VAD prevention efforts. The aim of this research were: 1) to determine the amount of the addition of RPO or CPO which produces carotene rich coconut palm sugar and acceptable sensory, 2) to analyze carotene retention over the processing and storage of coconut palm sugar, 3) to evaluate the effect of feeding red palm oil enriched palm sugar on vitamin A status and level of immunoglobulin G (IgG) of vitamin A depletion rats. Two types of provitamin A enriched coconut palm sugar were made by adding RPO or CPO each of 30 ml, 60 ml, 90 ml/ 10 L of toddy and packaged by two technique of packaging, i.e.: single packaging ( polypropylene/PP plastics) and double packaging (polypropylene plastics + brown paper). Addition of 30 ml/10 L of toddy was the best result based on sensory aspects and had the highest acceptance in taste, texture and overall acceptability which is similar with the control sugar and used in the next step of this research. The total carotene content and carotene retention increased with the increasing addition of red palm oil, but in the other hand the texture were softened. The total carotene content and carotene retention of CPO and RPO enriched coconut palm sugar were 1337 μg/100 g and 25.30 percent and 3946 μg/100 g and 63.38 percent, respectively. After stored for 2 months, the level of total carotenoids of red palm oil enriched coconut palm sugar decreased between 4.89 to 49.79 percent with carotene content between 703 μg/100 g up to 13383 μg/100 g. The decreased level of total carotene in one-month and two-month storage of palm sugars enriched with RPO was higher (17.48 and 24.47 percent) compared to CPO enriched coconut palm sugar (7.47 and 12.95 percent) (p<0.05). The use of double packaging (polypropylene plastic + brown paper) is able to inhibit the decrease in total carotenoid up to 4 to 6.67 percent, better than the single packaging. The longer the storage, moisture content of product increased. However, after stored up to 2 months, the water content in all treatments was in range of SNI-01-3743-1995 standard (< 10 percent) which is between 8.55 up to 9.94 percent. Study to evaluate the effect of feeding coconut palm sugar enriched with RPO or CPO on improving status of vitamin A and immune was done by using thirty six-weeks old-male Sprague Dawley rats. After 2 weeks of adaptation period, rats were given vitamin A deficient diet for 10 weeks as depletion period, vii
Keyword: CPO, coconut palm sugar, immune status, RPO, VAD