UNAIR NEWS – Universitas Airlangga held COVID-19 Archive Exhibition at the Balai Pemuda Surabaya from January 3 to 12, 2023. The exhibition showcased the memories of COVID-19 with various talk shows about healthy lifestyle during the pandemic.
The talk show featured Edith Frederika Puruhito SKM MSc (MedSci), a nutritionist and Traditional Medicine lecturer at UNAIR, to share tips on maintaining a healthy diet, on Wednesday, January 11, 2023. Many high school students in Surabaya attended the talk show. With Putu Aditya as moderator, the event was started with questions on how to maintain a healthy diet based from a traditional medicine perspective.
“According to traditional medicine, diet patterns are natural. We learn that internal and external factors cause diseases,” Edith said.
Stress, for instance, is caused by internal factors. “Stress can cause a loss of appetite, which weakens the body and the immune system. It opens the door for external pathogens like viruses to infect,” she added.
Traditionally, balance is the most important thing, just like the yin and yang concept. Nutrition is also a medicine for the body.
People must pay more attention to their food ingredients, especially the additional ones like food coloring and food flavoring.
“It’s better to consume natural food coloring, like plants with colorful pigments, rather than food with unknown coloring ingredients,” said the lecturer.
The color of your food, with its ingredients, may affect the body’s health.
“Eat your colors is very good for your healthy diet. There are various colorful foods on your plate. For instance, green in veggies was formed from the chlorophyll as an antioxidant, anticancer, and detoxification. Red is produced from the antioxidant type lycopene, which prevents degenerative diseases, and many more food colors for health purposes,” she said.
Food flavoring also requires equal concern in a healthy diet. The nutritional adequacy ratio in food seasonings like sodium salt is not needed much. Edith recommended half a teaspoon a day.
“It’s used much. You can use other alternative ingredients, like fish broth, beef broth, and chicken broth, it will add more flavorful tastes,” she added.
Author: Jihan Aura
Editor: Khefti Al Mawalia
