Beware of hidden hunger for refugees

Natural disasters such as tsunami, floods, earthquakes left a deep sorrow for the whole region who experience it. Various problems arise such disaster. Hundreds of thousands of human beings must live in refugee camps since the storm swept away her home. They become totally dependent on help from others to survive.

One of the serious problems commonly faced by increasing numbers of refugees are malnourished. From the data in the malnourished refugees in various locations, on average, an increase in the prevalence of malnutrition by 20%.

Preservation of fruits with BEESWAX

The fruits have an important role as a source of vitamins, minerals, and other nutritional adequacy of nutrition support. Bananas, for example, is one of the fruit contains a lot of carbohydrates and vitamin C. Similarly, citrus fruit and pear is a good source of vitamins and minerals which are quite good.

Not bear fruit kept longer and is also very susceptible to decomposition when people generally prefer to eat fresh fruit that is still in its original form.

Once harvested the fruit carries metabolic activity including respiration and transpiration. Respiration and transpiration activity will result in loss of substrate and water in the fruit until the fruit weight decreased. Respiratory activity can also lead to decrease vitamin C in fruit because ascorbic acid is very sensitive to oxidation. Further respiratory activity also resulted in soluble solids in fruit growing due to the accumulation of starch metabolism of glucose results.

One way to maintain the quality and freshness of the fruit is a layer of wax. Wax coating on the surface to prevent evaporation of water so it can slow withering away, inhibiting respiration rate, and polish the skin to increase the attractiveness of fruit for consumers. Wax coating and the thickness of the appropriate concentrations can prevent aerobic conditions in the fruit and provide the necessary protection against cuts and scratches on the surface of the fruit.

Several conditions need to wax as coating materials, among others: do not affect the smell and taste the fruit is coated, easy to dry, not fragile, shiny and smooth, does not produce a thick surface, low in cost, and non-toxic.

Beeswax are one of unexpected sources meet these requirements. Beeswax is a stable chemical nature of the melting point revolves around 61-690C, 200C gravity at around 0.96 and insoluble in water and slightly soluble in cold alcohol

The Food Additives

Food additives are compounds (or a mixture of various compounds) are intentionally added to food and is involved in processing, packaging and / or storage, and is not a material (ingredient) key. Food additives and degradation products, usually remains in the food, but there are some who deliberately separated during processing.

The addition of Food Additives generally aims to

(1) improve the nutritional value of food,

(2) improve the sensory value of food,

(3) extend the shelf life (shelf life) food.

Additional ingredients such as vitamins, minerals, or amino acids are usually added to improve and / or increase the nutritional value of a food. Many foods are enriched or fortified with vitamins to restore vitamins lost during processing, such as the addition of B vitamin to flour, or the addition of vitamin A into milk. Iron minerals added to enrich the nutritional value of food, mainly because of the iron in food generally has a bio availability low.

Color, odor, and consistency / texture of a food can be changed or reduced due to processing and storage. This can be improved by the addition of Food Additives as dyes, color-forming compounds, confirmation flavors, thickeners, stabilizers, and others. Formation of a distorted smell (off flavor) on fat products can be prevented by the addition of antioxidants. Texture of food can be improved by the addition of minerals, emulsifiers, thickeners and / or stabilizers such as monoglycerides, hydro colloid, and others.

Food processing lately have a tendency to produce food that is a long shelf life (durable) and easy to prepare (convenient). It is driven by factors such as material properties of fresh food that is generally easily damaged (perishable) and seasonal, as well as the lifestyle that want things easy and fast. To get such food, one of the businesses that use is to add a preservative, both to prevent the growth of microbes and to prevent the occurrence of chemical reactions that are not desired during processing and storage.

Food Additives is often used to produce food for special groups such as diabetics, patients who had undergone surgery, those who run a low-calorie diets or low-fat, and so on. Various Food Additives used for this purpose include artificial sweeteners, fat substitutes, thickeners, and others.