Counselling and training of nutritional snacks making for immunity increasing during COVID 19 pandemic

Increasing body immunity is very necessary after the Covid-19 pandemic. One of the efforts that can be made to increase the body's immunity is to consume functional foods with immunostimulant activity, such as processed snakehead fish products in the form of nuggets, and "parkusel" juice made from a mixture of bitter melon, dates and celery. The purpose of community service is to provide knowledge and skills to housewives and the community at the Veteran ABRI Housing Complex in Medan Estate, Deli Serdang Regency, in making functional food products in the form of snakehead fish nuggets and Perkusel juice. The community service method used is the counseling method with leafet aids and training in making snakehead fish nuggets and perkusel juice. The results of the activity showed that there was an increase in the knowledge of the community participants in community service activities about nutritious snack products that can increase body immunity by 71% in the good value category.

Optimization of high protein and zinc composite flour formulation with response surface methodology

Covid-19 pandemic had limited people's movement despite the demand to remain productive and maintain good health. Therefore, it was necessary to provide foods which are easy to distribute, durable, nutritious, and easily transformable to increase immunity. This research aims to develop a composite flour (TK) formula with optimal proportion of wheat flour (TT), snakehead fish flour (TIG), pumpkin flour (TBuL), and pumpkin seed flour (TBiL) which then enriched with zinc. The resulting TK is expected to be used as an ingredient for nutritious snacks containing high protein and zinc. The research was conducted in four stages, namely the making of each constituent flour, determining the best formulation with the Response Surface Methodology using Central Composite Design model, characterizing the physicochemical properties of TK and making meatballs, biscuits, and unting-unting from the TK. The three products were tested on experimental animals for their metabolic responses. The optimization of the formula resulted in three optimal formulations, namely formula A, B, and C with the proportion of TT:TIG:TBuL:TBiL respectively as follows 55:20:15:10;56.65:20:13.35:10;57.98:20:12.02:10. The most optimal formula of composite flour was formula A with the highest protein (26.12%) and zinc (18.06 mg/kg) content among other formulas. Then, zinc was added into Formula A using microencapsulation, and TK with protein content of 26.74% and zinc of 56.8 mg/kg were obtained. The histopatology observation on experimental animals showed that the three products made from TK did not cause necrosis of the liver or cell infiltration in the kidneys.