The Socialization of Analog Rice, One Method to Change the Rice Eating Pattern

Indonesia is a dominant country for rice consumers. Rice is Indonesia’s most important staple food. Though local carbohydrate sources other  than rice are still abundant and untapped optimally. Throughout its history, every  region in Indonesia had their own staple food. For example staple food for Papuans is sago. However, over the times, the current consumption  of rice in Indonesia has reached 316 grams per capita per day.

This statement was presented by Ms. Annisa K., the student of Food Science and Technology Department of the Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Bogor Agricultural University in the  Rural Dialogue as the  guest speaker, on Tuesday, 30 April 2012,  in RRI Bogor. 

"Farmers as well as consumers riot as the impacts of rice is expensive. We have to decrease our dependence on rice. In addition, we have to change the mainset of community, as the old adage says "a person has not said yet if you have not eaten rice to eat". Indonesia should return to locally produced staple foods other than rice, to improve the country’s food security, "she said.

In addition, according to her the cooking process of those materials are very influential. In general, people consume corn that directly boiled or just fried taro as their snack. Aware of such situation,  IPB has created  rice-like food product named `beras analog` (analog rice). The food product is designed to have functional contents using local powder like sweet potato, cassava, sorghum, sago, tubers and other food ingredients such as fiber, anti-oxidants and other required material.

"This is an effort to encourage public to consume sago or other materials, but in a rice-like food product. Through a specific process that was developed on campus, this research had been implemented since ancient times, but with different techniques. Currently we develop the local raw materials into a rice-like product named analog rice, "she said.

Annisa regrets to  know that some Indonesia communities in the United States who were  willing to buy rice in China Cities. "As we know that Bogor produces abundance of taro, why we neglect them. So little by little, we begin to consume analog rice, then the public will be aware and be full when you eat sorghum, sago, etc. A nation will be threatened to be Foodtrap, if the country  dependent only by one staple food, "she said.

This synthetic rice after being steamed, they look like cooked rice. In addition, the method to prepare rice is  easy, after the water boils, put the analog rice, then remove from heat.  The analog  rice can be consumed with common dishes symilar to the way we  consume nasi putih (long-grain white rice). The study on “analog rice”  has been implemented under the supervision of Senior Lecturer of the Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Bogor Agricultural University, Dr.Ir. Slamet Budijarto. (Wied).