Antioxidant Cheese as Functional Food in The Current Situation of Covid-19 Pandemic

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has penetrated the world and WHO established it as a global pandemic. The impact of this pandemic is extraordinary, especially on human health. This virus attacks the body so that the body’s metabolism is disrupted and results in decreased endurance or body immunity.

The body’s immunity is maintained so that the body’s cell metabolism can be controlled and not even utilized by the coronavirus to multiply its cells in the body. If people who have a medical record that is a degenerative disease such as diabetes, heart disease, and so on will be most vulnerable to the coronavirus. Some studies suggest that the death factor due to coronavirus infection is caused by complications related to the degenerative disease.

Functional food as important nutrient intake is increased in proportion to our daily diet. Functional food is believed to play an important role in preventing degenerative diseases to provide maximum defense for the body is responding to the potential for coronavirus infection. Functional bioactive components in food that is one of them contain antioxidant potential.

Cheese is a processed product of livestock (milk) by involving bacterial activity by fermenting milk lactose, causing clumping of milk protein (casein). The functional values of cheese are done by adding an antioxidant bioactive component derived from purple sweet potato ectract (a component of anthocyanin compounds). Purple sweet potato extract is fortified in goat’s milk and the process of making this cheese follows a commonly applied method. The characteristics of the antioxidant cheese in his research Miwada et al., 2019, it was mentioned that the antioxidant content in cheese froom goat milk so quite high at 103.68 mg/L.GAEAC and its potential lactic acid bacteria are 4.26 x 10³ CFU/g. The potential of goat milk cheese with the fortification of purple sweet potato extract gives an opportunities production of the functional food with antioxidant characteristics. The availability of antioxidants will help the body’s cell oxidation process go well, so that the decay of body cells can be avoided. The decay of cell in our body is very radical and reactive, furthermore it can reduce our endurance. This situation is so vulnerable especially if we are affected to the corona virus. Therefore, public awareness about the importance of functional foods, such as antioxidant cheese, needs to be encouraged as a ways to protecting our body.

Finally, the content of goat’s milk cheese with potential antioxidant from purple sweet potato extract will provide an alternative functional food. Antioxidant cheese can be an alternative addition to antioxidants in our body, so that the body’s metabolism is always controlled and the formation of cells which are radical can be reduces.

Source :

https://www.sciencescholar.us/journal/index.php/ijls