PROSES PENGOLAHAN DAN APLIKASI MINYAK SAWIT MERAH PADA INDUSTRI PANGAN

Abstract

Indonesia is the largest producer of palm oil in the world. The high productivity of palm oil should be followed by processing and diversification of processed palm oil products. One of the products are refined palm oil to eat. Palm oil can be processed into various kinds of products from the stem, fruit, root. The fruit is made into oil palm. Oil palm fruit is processed through handling the fruit bunches, boiling, threshing, pulverized, oil extraction, and clarification to become Crude Palm Oil (CPO). CPO has a variety of nutrients that are beneficial to human health, such as a-, a-, ii-carotene, vitamin E (tocopherol, tokotrienol), licopene, lutein, sterols, unsaturated fatty acid and ubiquinone. Generally CPO is processed into cooking oil. However, cooking oil processing causes damage to the nutrition. To gain benefit from the nutrients it needs to employ other treatment methods such as molecular distillation and Supercritical Fluid Extraxtion (SFE). However, the process is still expensive, modified conventional cooking oil processing methods is also developed so that it can produce oil that still has a high nutrient, which is called Red Palm Oil (RPO). RPO can be used to reduce the risk of anemia in pregnant women. RPO when stored at room temperature can last up to 8 months with a-carotene decrease from 500 to become 370.1 ppm. With a high nutritional value RPO can be used in a variety of products that are not exposed to excessive heat, including, saute oil, oils sachets for instant noodles, and salad dressings.