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Coffee is a popular beverage that is consumed worldwide. Habitual coffee drinking is associated with cancer risk reduction including pre- and post-menopausal breast cancer. The invert correlation between coffee intake and breast cancer risk is weak, therefore coffee is potential for functional beverage. Coffee should be taken for several times per day to get its benefit. Compounds which give the cancer reduction effect are still debatable, they can be compounds with antioxidant or non-antioxidant properties. Robusta coffee from Lampung has a special meaning for Indonesian coffee lovers due to its strong aroma and flavour with affordable price. In order to observe the anticancer activity of Lampung Robusta coffee, its aqueous methanol extract was passed through a chromatography column containing polyamide with aqueous methanol as the eluent with a gradient of 10%. A total of 54 fractions were obtained and labelled as A to K fractions. Chlorogenic acid was detected in fractions A and B. Meanwhile, it was not detected in other fractions including G fraction. This G fraction, however, was the only one to show cytotoxicity against MCF-7 breast cancer cell line. This result suggests that this fraction contains potential compounds with anticancer activity.

Compounds derived from natural sources have the potential use for food safety because of the antimicrobial properties. Today, consumer awareness on the potential negative effects of synthetic preservatives on health has sparked interest for researchers in the development and use of natural products in food. Antimicrobial testing was conducted on three gram negative bacteria, four gram positive bacteria and three fungi by micro dilution of ethanol, methanol, ethyl acetate and n-hexane extracts of bay leaf. The test results showed that all extracts did not have antimicrobial activity against gram negative bacteria. While, for gram-positive bacteria there are some extracts that have activity against certain bacteria, namely ethyl acetate extract and n-hexane against gram-positive MS = Mycobacterium smegmatis ATCC 70084 and methanol extract against gram-positive bacteria ML = Micrococcus luteus DSM 1790). All extracts have anti fungal activity against MH = Mucor hialisalis DSM 2656. It can be concluded that bay leaf extract using a variety of organic solvents shows selective antimicrobial activity against certain gram positive bacteria and fungi however no activity against gram negative bacteria.

Tempe is a functional food prepared from soybeans through Rhizopus spp. fermentation, originated from Indonesia. The present study was performed to investigate the cytotoxicity and antioxidant activity of tempe prepared from fermentation for 0-156 h and extracted with ethanol. The cytotoxicity was assessed on MCF 7 breast cancer cells using alamarBlue™ method. The antioxidant activity determined by DPPH free radical scavenging assay. The results indicated that ethanol extracts of 108 h tempe showed cytotoxicity potency at IC50 5.20 ± 1.01 μg/mL against MCF-7 breast cancer cell. Ethanol extract of 120 h tempe showed the highest antioxidant activity expressed as percent of inhibition, with no significant difference to those of 108 h tempe. It can be concluded that the cytotoxicity of tempe from 0-156 h of fermentation is correlated to their corresponding antioxidant activtity. Longer fermentation time, up to 108 h, increased the ability of tempe to inhibit the growth of the oxidative reaction and growth of MCF-7 breast cancer cells. Extended fermentation time, up to 156 h, tends to decrease the abilities of cytotoxicity and antioxidant activity.

Various herbal teas are available in the market and used for health maintenance or prevention of diseases. Previous studies by our research group showed that several boiled water extracts or organic solvent extracts of Indonesian mistletoes (benalu) and organic solvents extracts of Selaginella (cakar ayam) have in vitro and/or in vivo anticancer activities[1,2,3,4,5]. Therefore the aim of our to study the in vitro bioactivities (antioxidant, antidiabetes and cytotoxicity) of these plant materials as when prepared as herbal tea infusion. Four mistletoe samples (M1; M2; M3; M4) and one sample of Selaginella (S) were used in this study. DPPH free radical scavenging activity method was used for antioxidant. Inhibition of a-glucosidase activity method was used for antidiabetes. Growth inhibition to breast cancer cell line MCF7 method was used for cytotoxicity. The results showed that all mistletoes samples showed high in vitro antioxidant, antidiabetes and cytotoxicity, whereas the Selaginella sample showed significantly lower activitiy for antioxidant (about 5x less) and about half for antidiabetes and cytotoxicity. These results suggest that for further development of functional drink, mistletoes samples showed better potential than selaginella when used as a single material in herbal tea infusion. However we should make into account the possibility of synergistic effect on bioactivities when mixtures of two or several plant materials were present in the herbal tea formulation. Currently formulation of herbal teas using various mixture of different mistletoes as well as mixture of mistletoe and Selaginella are still under investigation.

There is an increasing demand to tailor the functional properties of mixed biopolymer systems that find application in dairy food products. The effect of static high pressure processing (HPP), up to 600 MPa for 15 min at room temperature, on milk–gelatin mixtures with different solid concentrations (5%, 10%, 15% and 20% w/w milk solid and 0.6% w/w gelatin) was investigated. The viscosity remarkably increased in mixtures prepared with high milk solid concentration (15% and 20% w/w) following HPP at 300 MPa, whereas HPP at 600 MPa caused a decline in viscosity. This was due to ruptured aggregates and phase separation as confirmed by confocal laser scanning microscopy. Molecular bonding of the milk–gelatin mixtures due to HPP was shown by Fourier-transform infrared spectra, particularly within the regions of 1610–1690 and 1480–1575 cm−1, which reflect the vibrational bands of amide I and amide II, respectively.

Cryomilling of rice starch was evaluated as a non-chemical way to modify starch structure and properties. Cryomilling in a liquid nitrogen bath (63–77.2 K) was done to Quest (10.80% amylose) and Pelde (20.75% amylose) rice starch at five different time frames (0, 15, 30, 45, and 60 min). The viscosity of the cryomilled rice starch decreased significantly (p < 0.05) with increasing milling duration, including peak viscosity, hot-paste viscosity, cold-paste viscosity, breakdown, and consistency. Increasing milling time significantly increased (p < 0.05) water solubility index and water absorption index. Infra-red spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction crystallography both showed that the crystallinity of the cryomilled starch decreased with increasing milling time. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analyses showed that after 60 min cryomilling there was partial loss of crystallinity (86% for Quest and 91% for Pelde) of both cryomilled starches. The cryomilling process modified the rice starch by causing a loss of crystallinity, that reduced its pasting temperature and increased water absorption, and by fragmentation of starch (probably the amylopectin fraction) that reduced the viscosity and increased solubility.