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n an effort to increase vitamin A consumption, the government prefers to add synthetic vitamins to clear and transparent cooking oil rather than using beta carotene, the natural source, which adds a reddish color.

Sukirman, a nutritionist from the Indonesian Fortification Coalition (KFI), said that natural beta carotene was less appealing to consumers, since it has a bitter taste and spoiled the food.

“We used it in the 1960s before technology could distill clear and transparent oil,” he said during a discussion on vitamin-A enrichment in cooking oil.

The data in Basic Health Research (Riskesdas) reveals that coverage of vitamin A supplements for children aged between 6 months and 5 years decreased to 69.8 percent in 2010 from 71.5 percent in 2007.

The government has chosen cooking oil as a means to improve nutritional status, especially among children and pregnant women.

It will make it mandatory for producers to add vitamin A by 2013.

Drajat Martianto, a nutritionist from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture’s (IPB) School of Public Nutrition, said cooking oil is a strategic means to improve vitamin A consumption.

Citing data, Drajat said that Indonesian people consumed more than 20 grams of cooking oil per day, with children aged between 2 to 5 years consuming 17 grams per day which was quite high.

The National Standardization Agency is currently working to make vitamin A enrichment an obligatory part of cooking oil products.

The Coordinating Economic Ministry estimated that vitamin A fortification will cost Rp 10,000 for every kilogram of cooking oil, which some producers regard as a burden.

The proponents of preservation of beta carotene in cooking oil said that it would be wasteful to use artificial vitamin A while destroying the abundant amount of it derived from palm oil production.

Fransiska Rungkat Zakaria, another researcher from IPB, said that the problems of vitamin A deficiency could be tackled by consuming red palm oil either in stir frying or salad oil forms as well as in capsules.

In 2009, 9,600 tons of pro vitamin A, or beta carotene, was destroyed by the cooking oil industry as consumers prefer pure cooking oil.

“Such an amount of beta carotene would have met the vitamin A needs of 66 billion children or 30 billion adults per year since children needed only 400 micrograms vitamin A per day and 900 micrograms per day for adults,” she said.