Preservatives are chemicals that can inhibit the damage
there is food, because of bacteria, yeast, fungus. Chemical reactions that often must be controlled is the oxidation reaction, browning (browning) and other enzymatic reactions. Preservative often used in processed foods. Preserving food is very advantageous because the manufacturer can store excess food that exists and can be reused when the end of season arrives. One frequently used preservative is benzoic acid. Benzoic acid is classified as GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) or materials that are safe digunaan the maximum limit is 0.1%. In this experiment, will be identified whether contained preservatives benzoic acid in this case, the sample to be tested, namely drinks Vita Jelly and boiled fish. The first stage of this lab is to dissolve 1 part of the sample into 4 parts water and then stirred and filtered. After it took 0-100 ml in the sample solution and acidified with dilute 1 N H2SO4 and then heated in a water bath. Then mixing the sample solution HCl and heated at 180 C for 3 minutes. Once cool, making the sample solution becomes alkaline with ammonia and then boiled and after cold given 40 ml of HCl. The incidence of red-brown color indicate the presence of benzoic acid. In the first sample, ie drinks Vita Jelly there are deposits of red-brown at the final solution. This shows the preservative benzoic acid in the sample. In the next sample, boiled fish did not find any red-brown sediment which indicates no preservatives found in the samples tested.