The Food Technology Students Association of Institut Teknologi Sumatera (HIMATEPA ITERA) held the Wonderfoody event to celebrate World Food Day which fell on October 16, 2021 with the theme “ Functional Food as an Immune System Booster”. One of the activities in this event was the socialization regarding Functional Food which was held on Saturday, October 9, 2021 around ITERA. This socialization was carried out directly to the surrounding community by distributing brochures about functional food and providing some examples of functional food while still maintaining health protocols. Students carried out the socialization by distributing flyers that contained information about functional food starting from its definition to types of functional food. In addition, students also distributed functional food that can be consumed for breakfast in the morning. The functional foods distributed included soybean milk, fruit, ginger pudding, and others.
During the socialization, students explained the definition of functional food, the benefits of functional food, as well as the types and examples of functional food. Functional Food is food that contains one or more food components that, based on scientific studies, have certain physiological functions outside their original function, proven not to be harmful and beneficial to health. The benefits of functional food include preventing nutritional deficiencies, protecting against disease, encouraging growth and development of children, and others. Examples of functional food include fruits, nuts, grains, fermented foods, vegetables, herbs and spices, and others. The surrounding community was very enthusiastic about listening to the students’ socialization, evidenced by the questions asked to the students. The surrounding community hopes to know and add their knowledge about what functional foods are and the benefits of functional food.
This activity was carried out with the aim of educating the community about the importance of consuming functional food, especially during the pandemic as is now. Besides the benefits mentioned earlier, it turns out that functional food can help improve immunity so that the body will be stronger in fighting the covid 19 virus. Even more, getting functional food around us is not difficult and there are so many local foods that have benefits as functional food.
