Prof Sumiati: No More Fear, Now Poultry Products Can Be Low Cholesterol with Functional Food Engineering

High cholesterol content in egg and poultry meat products is often a public enemy. Not to mention the increasing incidence of cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and heart disease. It is predicted that the incidence will increase to 23.4 million deaths in 2030.

Prof Sumiati, a Professor of IPB University from the Faculty of Animal Sciences (Fapet) said, now people don’t need to worry anymore, poultry products that used to be high in cholesterol can be conditioned with functional food nutrition engineering.

“In addition to the basic benefits, functional poultry products can overcome several health problems such as lowering blood cholesterol and stroke, overcoming vitamin A deficiency, and overcoming protein deficiency,” she said in The 2023 Poultry Animal Nutrition Student Association (Himasiter) Webinar Series with the topic ‘Nutritional Engineering Innovation to Produce Functional Poultry Products’.

She explained that the benchmark is the ratio of healthy omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acid content. Healthy food contains a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 of 1:1 to 1:4. This value is the benchmark for engineering egg and meat foods to be close to healthy. This nutritional engineering can be done through specialized feeding.

“Healthy egg and poultry meat products can be produced through fortification to increase vitamin and omega-3 content. With special feeding, nutritional engineering of eggs or meat will offer perfect functions in nature that have been provided in the product itself,” she explained.

For example, said Prof Sumiati, by providing fish oil from fish processing waste or algae. The results of the study found that with this fortification, the omega-3 content in poultry products increased.

“Duck egg production contains high omega-3 fatty acids by giving five percent lemur fish oil and cassava leaf top flour. The omega-3 content increased to 78 percent. Besides high omega-3, the ratio of omega-3 and 6 is also 5.3 or close to healthy,” she said.

Meanwhile, she continued, vitamin A-rich poultry products can be produced with organic zinc supplementation from katuk leaf meal and the use of palm oil in feed. This nutritional engineering produces poultry products that are low in fat and cholesterol and rich in vitamins.

“Clear evidence of the relationship between food consumed and the incidence of heart attacks is found in the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid content in various parts of the world. When foods with a higher omega-6 ratio, the incidence of heart attack is also very high,” she continued. This evidence can be seen in the people of Japan and Greenland who consume foods such as fish with a higher omega-3 ratio.

Nowadays, the awareness of healthy living, paying attention to the nutrients they consume, and avoiding the risk of disease has led to an increasing demand for functional foods in the community. Functional poultry products are no exception.

“At the very least, as producers of eggs and poultry meat, we must be able to produce healthy food that can prevent degenerative diseases due to high cholesterol content,” concluded Prof Sumiati. (MW/Rz) (IAAS/TNY)