Effect of Alternative Preservatives on the Quality of Rice Cakes as Halal Food

The halal food market is steadily increasing. The use of alcohol for any reason is strictly prohibited in halal foods; however, ethanol is widely used as a preservative for commercial rice cakes (tteok). The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of natural substances as alternative preservatives for rice cakes. Four different solutions were tested: distilled water (control), ethanol, grapefruit seed extract (GSE), and a mixture of citric extracts and organic acids (MCO). We investigated the total plate count (TPC), yeast and mold counts, color, texture profile assays (TPA), and sensory evaluation. Significant reductions of 3.65 log CFU were observed in TPC in rice cake treated with MCO solution after 28 days of storage. However, mold and yeast counts were only reduced by ethanol treatment. Among the physical texture properties analysis, hardness was maintained for the 28 days in all samples. The total color difference values (ΔE) revealed no significant color changes in any rice cake compared to the controls. The ethanol-treated rice cake scored the lowest for overall preference and desired hardness.

167Epidemiology of food choking deaths in Japan: Time trends and regional variations

Background We aimed to investigate the nationwide epidemiology of food choking deaths in Japan. Methods Using Japan Vital Statistics death data (2006-2016), we identified food choking deaths based on the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases code W79 (Inhalation and ingestion of food causing obstruction of respiratory tract). The demographics of people with food choking deaths; temporal trend of food choking deaths by the year (overall and by age group) and the day of year; and prefecture variations, were reported. Results 52,366 people experienced food choking deaths (median age, 82 years, 53% were men, and 57% occurred at home). The highest number of food choking deaths occurred in January 1, 2, and 3, in that order; and lowest in June. Despite a constant total number of cases at around 4000 yearly, the incidence proportion declined from 16.2 to 12.1 per 100,000 population from 2006 to 2016 among people aged 75-84 years. The proportion peaked at 53.5 (2008) and decreased to 43.6 (2016) among people aged ≥85 years. Prefecture variations occurred in the number of food choking deaths, highest in Niigata and lowest in Kyoto. Conclusions The results suggest targets (by age group, region, and day of the year) for the prevention of food choking deaths. Time trends and regional variations may be related to the consumption of Japanese rice cake (mochi), known as a major cause of food suffocation in Japan. Key messages The number of food choking deaths in Japan was highest on New Year’s Day.

MARKET BASKET ANALYSIS USING THE FP-GROWTH ALGORITHM TO DETERMINE CROSS-SELLING

KAOCHEM Sinergi Mandiri Cooperative is a cooperative that provides various kinds of basic needs such as basic foodstuffs that can meet the needs of its members. The cooperative transaction data is only stored as a report. Association rules are a method in data mining that functions to identify items that have a value that is likely to appear simultaneously with other items. One implementation of the association method is Market Basket Analysis. The data used are transaction data for November 2019. Data mining is one of the processes or stages of the KDD method. The data mining process is carried out using the FP-Growth algorithm, which is one of the algorithms for calculating the sets that often appear from data. Researchers analyzed transaction data using the Rapid Miner Studio tools. In the data mining process using FP-Growth the researcher determines a minimum support value of 3% and a minimum confidence of 50%. The association process using these values ​​produces 3 strong rules, namely if ades 350 ml, then fried / lontong with a support value of 0.030 and confidence 0.556 and if fried st, then fried / lontong with a support value of 0.048 and confidence 0.639, and if nasi uduk / bacang , then fried / rice cake with a support value of 0.031 and confidence 0.824. The results of the association rules can be applied using one of the marketing techniques, namely cross-selling to increase the sales of the cooperative.