Cholesterol Lowering Food Innovation Amazed Medical Product Competition's Jury
By Neli Syahida
Editor Neli Syahida
BANDUNG, itb.ac.id - Lately, medical science hasn't concerned anymore to infection disease anymore. In contrast, development of various technologies cause indirectly a rapid increase of lifestyle associated disease. One of them is coronary heart disease, which is reinforced by the emergence of high cholesterol condition. For this reason, three students of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology 2011, Martha Netta Simutorang, Hanary geby Jessica, and Glorianna Chrysilla created a cholesterol-lowering food product that won Product Competition "Prescription" in May 2014. Located at the University of Hasanuddin, this competition set a theme "Optimizing the management of Indonesia's natural resource potency as pharmaceutical products which have economic and globally competitive value." 
In practice, Martha and the team performed a process to fortify foods. Food fortification is a deliberate addition of one or more nutrients in the food. In this case, they added the pumpkin seeds (Curcubita pepo) into the oatmeal cereal to improve nutrition. Pumpkin seeds had previously been known to have cholesterol lowering activity. Pumpkin seed contains high levels unsaturated lipid. By addition of pumpkin seeds into oatmeal and combined with low-fat milk, cereal formulation was expected to further increase its activity in lowering cholesterol.
The process of making food products was quite simple. First, pumpkin seed was grinded to powder, then it was dried. For formulation, pumpkin seeds were combined with oatmeal and low-fat milk with a ratio of 2:1. "In our beginning plan, we just want to make products can be used simply and easily, not like drugs," Martha said. With the guidance of Dr. rer. nat. Sophi Damayanti, this team finally succeed to won this competition.
In the beginning of the selection, each team was asked to make a paper about the products and attached their product photos. Then, jury selected and filtered to top eleven teams. Three teams from the School of Pharmacy ITB managed to qualify for admission, and they were given chances to presented their product in front of jury. Martha admitted that at first, she had felt inferior to other groups because the others made more sophisticated one. However, after the presentation, she and his team surprised because one of the jury said that their products are ready for market. "Why aren't you try to offer your products to pharmaceutical industry, such as Kalbe Farma?" asked one of the judges.
By joining this competition, Martha got a lot of experience. She then goot to know the step to make a good writing papers. She admitted that this was the first time she followed paper writing contest. In addition, she also received lessons from a variety of processes which she did during the competition. "Actually, something that looks simple, if it is carried out seriously, it would be useful," she said.
