UNAIR NEWS – To celebrate National Nutrition Day 2016, Health Nutrition Department, Faculty of Public Health, Universitas Airlangga cooperated with PERGIZI Pangan Indonesia to hold a seminar on balanced nutrition. It was held in Kahuripan Hall, Campus C UNAIR. It was attended by 322 participants from students, provincial health agency employees, public health center (puskesmas), and media crews and bloggers on Saturday, February 6.
The seminar presented four speakers from the academic and the government, they were Prof. Hardinsyah as the chairman of PERGIZI Pangan Indonesia, Ir. Edy Purwanto Tertiyus, MMA from Provicial Food Security Agency East Java, Edi Suroso, S.KM as the person in charge in nutrition division in East Java Provincial Health Agency and Dr. dr. Sri Adiningsih MS, MCN from FKM UNAIR Department of Nutrition.
In his presentation, to support nutritional development on kids, Prof. Hardinsyah encouraged PKK representatives to always be creative in processing food especially fruit and vegetables.
“If kids don’t like fruit and vegetables, then the mothers have to be creative in processing the food. Fruit and vegetables should be mixed in the kids’ favorite food for example, carrots are mixed with flour and then fried,” said Prof. Hardinsyah.
To guarantee availability of diverse food in Indonesia, Edi as the representative of Provicial Food Security Agency East Java said that his agency right now continuously publicizes the making of mini garden (karang kitri) and sustainable reserve food garden.
In the program, Provicial Food Security Agency encouraged the community to plant food reserve in the garden, while for the sustainable reserve food garden, the agency will support the government with polybags.
“Up to this point, there are 2,000 mini gardens. We tried to help all villages in East Java to get the mini gardens so the food security can be achieved. The program even gives more values. There are some families which sells their overflowing garden crops,” said Edi.
Regarding promoted balanced nutrition, an expert from FKM UNAIR Sri Asiningsih stated that all this time, the concept of tumpeng which illustrate balanced nutrition still have a few imperfection. According to Dini, with so many food in tumpeng, it triggers the people that nutritional food is expensive.
“Pictures of ideal tumpeng still difficult to follow because everything expensive. They thought that all food in the pictures should be served in one serving,” said dr. Dini.
She also felt sorry as the picture of water was not included in the concept of tumpeng. It could influence the people that water is less important for the body.
Author: Defrina Sukma S.
