Nanomaterials will pose new regulatory challenges for the food industry. Since nanomaterials can not only be ingested but also inhaled or absorbed through skin contact, my guess s that we can look for active nano-scale products to be regulated closer to a drug than a food.
Nanomaterials are engineered to take advantage of unique properties at the nano-scale – from 1-1000nm (nanometres or billionths of one metre).
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Nanoparticles can gain access to the body through inhalation, ingestion, skin penetration and injection.
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The FDA is yet to establish any regulations to confront the potential risks involved with the use of nanomaterials in the food sector.
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The FDA stated that it “believes that evaluations of safety, effectiveness or public health impact of such products (containing nanomaterials) should consider the unique properties and behaviours that nanomaterials may exhibit.”
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Dr. Oz, CNN, Consumer Reports and others have widly reported on the risk posed by arsenic in apple juice. Fooducate and a host of food professionals, dietitians, and others in the scientific community want to call attention to the fact that ... it the SUGAR we should be worried about.
Skip the juice, eat a whole apple and drink water. In the last few days, we’ve been getting questions from Fooducate community members about arsenic in apple juice. It started when Consumer Reports published its findings on lead and arsenic levels in apple and grape juice. The not for profit organization has urged the FDA to do something about it. According to Consumer Reports: |
The tests of 88 samples of apple juice and grape juice purchased in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut by Consumer Reports staffers found that 10 percent of those samples had total arsenic levels exceeding federal drinking-water standards of 10 parts per billion (ppb) and 25 percent had lead levels higher than the 5 ppb limit for bottled water set by the Food and Drug Administration. Most of the arsenic detected in our tests was the type called inorganic, which is a human carcinogen. Read more… |
Arsenic is a toxic chemical that has found its way into the food system through pesticides, mining byproducts, and as a naturally occurring compound. In India, cases of arsenic poisoning in water are well documented. As little as 150 parts per billion have been shown to cause cancer. That’s why a threshold of 10 ppb in drinking water has been set by the World Health Organization and the FDA. There is no standard for juice though. |
If this bad news from Consumer Reports is going to make you stop buying apple juice, so be it. |
But you should stop giving your kids juice for a much more important and statistically probable reason. Apple juice is liquid candy that is closer in nutritional value to soda than to a fresh apple. With all the reporting we’ve done on childhood obesity this week, sweet beverages can be one of the first and most effective areas for parents to tackle in their quest for normal sized kids. |
No surprise that pictures of food influence how we perceive the experience of flavor. it would seem to follow that package branding and advertising do matter.
Images on food packaging and labels may affect the way consumers perceive and remember flavours, according to new research.
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“An effect of image labels on the memory of fruit juice flavour was demonstrated using an incidental memory paradigm, an experimental paradigm close to that of daily life,” reported the researchers, led by Masako Okamoto from Obihiro University of Agriculture & Veterinary Medicine, Japan.
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“For example, when people select and buy foods, they usually cannot taste them, but must rely on recalling memories of the flavour ... Indeed, it has been reported that decision making at the time of food purchasing is influenced by the memory of ‘taste’,” noted Okamoto and his team.
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As part of the study, 92 participants first tasted a 1:1 mixture of 100% pure apple juice and 100% pure peach juice, while at the same time viewing images of either apples, peaches, or a control. Later, participants were asked to taste juice mixtures, containing varying ratios of 100% peach to 100% apple juice, and then to rate their similarity to the original 1:1 mixture.
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The researchers found that for participants who perceived the label and juice flavour as being highly similar, flavour in memory shifted towards that suggested by the label.
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“While memory shifted towards that suggested by the label for participants perceiving the label and original juice flavour as highly congruent, those who perceived the label and flavour as less congruent showed the opposite tendency,” noted the authors.
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“These results reveal that flavour memory can be biased toward that of the image labels during initial tasting,” noted the researchers.
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No surprise that pictures of food influence how we perceive the experience of flavor. it would seem to follow that package branding and advertising do matter.
Images on food packaging and labels may affect the way consumers perceive and remember flavours, according to new research.
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“An effect of image labels on the memory of fruit juice flavour was demonstrated using an incidental memory paradigm, an experimental paradigm close to that of daily life,” reported the researchers, led by Masako Okamoto from Obihiro University of Agriculture & Veterinary Medicine, Japan.
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“For example, when people select and buy foods, they usually cannot taste them, but must rely on recalling memories of the flavour ... Indeed, it has been reported that decision making at the time of food purchasing is influenced by the memory of ‘taste’,” noted Okamoto and his team.
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As part of the study, 92 participants first tasted a 1:1 mixture of 100% pure apple juice and 100% pure peach juice, while at the same time viewing images of either apples, peaches, or a control. Later, participants were asked to taste juice mixtures, containing varying ratios of 100% peach to 100% apple juice, and then to rate their similarity to the original 1:1 mixture.
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The researchers found that for participants who perceived the label and juice flavour as being highly similar, flavour in memory shifted towards that suggested by the label.
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“While memory shifted towards that suggested by the label for participants perceiving the label and original juice flavour as highly congruent, those who perceived the label and flavour as less congruent showed the opposite tendency,” noted the authors.
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“These results reveal that flavour memory can be biased toward that of the image labels during initial tasting,” noted the researchers.
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This study outline a flavor profile for a new functional food. Any takers?
Formulators looking to incorporate ginseng into functional food products should minimize the ingredient’s bitter and earthy flavors in order to succeed on the US market, suggests new research published in the Journal of Sensory Studies.
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“Findings suggested that the original ginseng flavors, including bitterness and earthiness, be minimized in order to establish potential for success in the US market,” they wrote. “…There was a strong suggestion that the directions for the development of new ginseng food products should be based on preexisting product types, such as cookies, snacks, cereals, energy bars, chocolates and coffee rather than innovative or unfamiliar product types.”
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In addition, the participants suggested that added sweeteners should be considered to reduce bitterness, and preferred honey over sugar or artificial sweeteners in ginseng food products. They also suggested that adding other bitter notes, such as coffee or chocolate could be considered harmonious flavors.
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In order to mask earthy, musky flavors perceived to be undesirable by many participants, they suggested adding fruity, citrus, cinnamon or ginger flavors to ginseng food products.
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According to Mintel data, ginseng is one of the top 10 best-selling herbal dietary supplements in the United States, but ginseng-containing products have been mostly limited to the beverage category, despite a growing functional food market.
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If we add black pepper to the mix (likely a good combination) we can not only lose weight but have more energy all at once!
Two months of supplementation with a combination of extracts from Phaseolus vulgaris (kidney bean) and Cynara scolymus (artichoke) were associated with an reduction in hunger scores and greater weight loss, compared with placebo, according to findings published in Phytotherapy Research.
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Specifically, people overweight subjects in the bean-artichoke group lost over 1 kg more weight than people in the placebo group, reported researchers from the University of Pavia in Italy.
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For the new study, the Pavia-based scientists recruited 39 overweight subjects and randomly assigned them to receive either the kidney bean-artichoke supplement or placebo for two months. Satiety was measured using the Haber scale, which required subjects to rank their feelings of hunger/fullness, with –10 being extreme hunger and +10 being ‘full to nausea’.
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Results showed that the Haber score for the active supplement increased from -2.84 at the start of the study to +0.61, while the placebo group recorded a final value of -2.86, from an baseline value of -2.76.
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In addition, weight loss in the placebo group was measured at 1.54 kg after two months, compared with 2.65 kg in the supplement group.
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Commenting on the potential bioactives in the extracts, the researchers note that compounds called phytohaemoagglutinins may increase the release of cholecystokinin and glucagon‐like peptides and glycoproteins: “These, in turn, increase gastric emptying time, thus favouring the feeling of satiety,” they added.
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I have no doubt that phytochemicals are very powerful compounds. I had not heard of the association of pepper with energy; but I do only use pepper on my morning eggs and generally feel awake after breakfast. ... Or was that the confounding effect of another morning phytochemical - coffee.
Researchers at the University of Georgia are exploring whether rosemary or black pepper could tackle mental fatigue as part of a series of studies financed by the McCormick Science Institute.
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Results will be due next year, he told NutraIngredients USA: “The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether mental energy is altered, compared to capsule placebo, after consuming 2 grams (in capsule form) of either black pepper or rosemary.
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“We are measuring self-reported energy symptoms and vigilance performance - a measure of sustained attention through identifying numbers changing on a computer screen -before, during and after the treatments or placebo.
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“This is a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled experiment conducted with 20 volunteers [students of both sexes that are “fasted and well-rested”] in each treatment group who report average or lower than average symptoms of energy during the week prior to participation.”
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The ability of spices to combat fatigue has been “frequently claimed by practitioners of alternative and traditional medicine”, said O’Connor.
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The discovery that fire could be used to cook food may have impacted human development. Fire, as a precursor to temperature control, clearly impacted human health by improving food safety.
Energy value of foods is most often allocated by using the Atwater general factor system, in which the main food components – protein, fat, and carbohydrate – have a single energy factor, regardless of the food in which they are found or how they are processed. Carbohydrates and proteins are considered to contain four calories per gram, fat nine calories per gram, and the system also includes a value of seven calories per gram of alcohol.
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However, this latest research, conducted by Rachel Carmody, a student in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, found that cooked food delivered more energy than raw.
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“It is astonishing, since energy gain is the primary reason we eat,” she said.
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She fed two groups of mice diets that consisted of either meat or sweet potatoes prepared in one of four ways – cooked and whole, cooked and pounded, raw and whole, or raw and pounded – and tracked changes in body mass and how much the mice used an exercise wheel. She said the results clearly showed mice gained more energy from the cooked foods than raw, and led her to question the use of the Atwater system for energy labeling.
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Carmody said: “The system is based on principles that don’t reflect actual energy availability. First, the human gastrointestinal tract includes a whole host of bacteria, and those bacteria metabolize some of our food for their own benefit. Atwater doesn’t discriminate between food that is digested by the human versus the bacteria. Second, it doesn’t account for the energy spent digesting food, which can be substantial. In both cases, processing increases the energy accrued to the human. Such evidence suggests that food labels do not properly account for the effects of food processing.”
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Carmody said that her findings could also call into question the commonly held belief that meat consumption in itself was the main contributor to ancestral human brain development, suggesting that cooking the food that was already available – such as meat and tubers – may have had a significant role in increasing energy availability.
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This may be weird science to some, but my own work associating with dielectric heating of food yielded astonishing results. We never created a visible plasma field (see photo below) but we did measure rapid, linear heating rates that could kill bacteria without appreciably impacting product quality. We were working on seeds for sprouting, measuring seed germination rates post electrical treatment. This is very promising to the future of food technology.
A new method for decontaminating produce by inactivating microbes in sealed packaging has the potential to double the shelf-life of fruits and vegetables.
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The process involves the passing of a dielectric discharge - two electrodes of high voltage electricity – through food in normal food packaging lined with plasma.
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“What we want to do is develop a dry, non-thermal process of decontaminating fruit and vegetables, making produce safe to eat as well as extending its shelf life, while not affecting the texture or taste of the product.”
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“The shelf-life of a treated item will vary, depending on the product itself as every type of fruit or vegetable has a different original shelf-life - but there will be a significant shelf-life extension.”
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This plasma creates an active species within the bag, which then inactivates pathogenic bacteria in the food package. These active species then convert back to their original composition over a period of around 12 hours.
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The impact of the results hold benefits for consumer safety and confidence, extended shelf-life and increased demand for fresh produce, which will in turn impact on the competitiveness for fresh food processors, said the team.
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Score another research finding that shows the power of natural phytochemicals (I.e. plant based compounds) in the human diet.
In an article published online in the European Journal of Nutrition this week, Howatson et al. found that tart cherry juice from Montmorency cherries significantly increased melatonin levels in the body.
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Since melatonin is the hormone that regulates sleep, the team found that people who consumed tart cherry juice concentrate not only slept for longer, but also had improved their quality of sleep.
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In this small-scale study, Howatson et al. collaborated with the cherry juice firm Cherryactive to recruit 20 healthy volunteers, who drank a 30ml serving of either tart cherry juice or a placebo juice for 7 days.
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Participants who drank tart cherry juice concentrate for one week were found to have a significant increase in urinary melatonin (+15-16 per cent) against the placebo group.
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Actigraphy measurements also registered an increase of around 15 minutes to time spent in bed, an increase of 25 minutes in total sleep time and a 5-6 per cent increase in ‘sleep efficiency’ (a global measure of sleep quality).
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Cherry juice drinkers also reported less napping time during the day (compared to their normal sleeping habits) and against placebo group napping times.
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