Hasil untuk "Nutrition. Foods and food supply"

T. Lobstein, R. Jackson-Leach, M. Moodie et al.

Swati Sethi, S. Tyagi, R. Anurag

M. Springmann, K. Wiebe, D. Mason-D’Croz et al.

Summary Background Sustainable diets are intended to address the increasing health and environmental concerns related to food production and consumption. Although many candidates for sustainable diets have emerged, a consistent and joint environmental and health analysis of these diets has not been done at a regional level. Using an integrated health and environmental modelling framework for more than 150 countries, we examined three different approaches to sustainable diets motivated by environmental, food security, and public health objectives. Methods In this global modelling analysis, we combined analyses of nutrient levels, diet-related and weight-related chronic disease mortality, and environmental impacts for more than 150 countries in three sets of diet scenarios. The first set, based on environmental objectives, replaced 25–100% of animal-source foods with plant-based foods. The second set, based on food security objectives, reduced levels of underweight, overweight, and obesity by 25–100%. The third set, based on public health objectives, consisted of four energy-balanced dietary patterns: flexitarian, pescatarian, vegetarian, and vegan. In the nutrient analysis, we calculated nutrient intake and changes in adequacy based on international recommendations and a global dataset of nutrient content and supply. In the health analysis, we estimated changes in mortality using a comparative risk assessment with nine diet and weight-related risk factors. In the environmental analysis, we combined country-specific and food group-specific footprints for greenhouse gas emissions, cropland use, freshwater use, nitrogen application, and phosphorus application to analyse the relationship between the health and environmental impacts of dietary change. Findings Following environmental objectives by replacing animal-source foods with plant-based ones was particularly effective in high-income countries for improving nutrient levels, lowering premature mortality (reduction of up to 12% [95% CI 10–13] with complete replacement), and reducing some environmental impacts, in particular greenhouse gas emissions (reductions of up to 84%). However, it also increased freshwater use (increases of up to 16%) and had little effectiveness in countries with low or moderate consumption of animal-source foods. Following food-security objectives by reducing underweight and overweight led to similar reductions in premature mortality (reduction of up to 10% [95% CI 9–11]), and moderately improved nutrient levels. However, it led to only small reductions in environmental impacts at the global level (all impacts changed by <15%), with reduced impacts in high-income and middle-income countries, and increased resource use in low-income countries. Following public health objectives by adopting energy-balanced, low-meat dietary patterns that are in line with available evidence on healthy eating led to an adequate nutrient supply for most nutrients, and large reductions in premature mortality (reduction of 19% [95% CI 18–20] for the flexitarian diet to 22% [18–24] for the vegan diet). It also markedly reduced environmental impacts globally (reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 54–87%, nitrogen application by 23–25%, phosphorus application by 18–21%, cropland use by 8–11%, and freshwater use by 2–11%) and in most regions, except for some environmental domains (cropland use, freshwater use, and phosphorus application) in low-income countries. Interpretation Approaches for sustainable diets are context specific and can result in concurrent reductions in environmental and health impacts globally and in most regions, particularly in high-income and middle-income countries, but they can also increase resource use in low-income countries when diets diversify. A public health strategy focused on improving energy balance and dietary changes towards predominantly plant-based diets that are in line with evidence on healthy eating is a suitable approach for sustainable diets. Updating national dietary guidelines to reflect the latest evidence on healthy eating can by itself be important for improving health and reducing environmental impacts and can complement broader and more explicit criteria of sustainability. Funding Wellcome Trust, EAT, CGIAR, and British Heart Foundation.

S. Jaffee, S. Henson, L. Unnevehr et al.

Food safety is linked in direct and indirect ways to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those on ending hunger and poverty, and promoting good health and well-being. Food and nutritional security are realized only when the essential elements of a healthy diet are safe to eat, and when consumers recognize this. The safety of food is vital for the growth and transformation of agriculture, which are needed to feed a growing and more prosperous world population, for the modernization of national food systems, and for a country's efficient integration into regional and international markets. The safety of food is the result of the actions or inactions of many stakeholders operating under diverse environmental, infrastructure, and socio-political conditions. These stakeholders include farmers, food handlers and distributors, food manufacturers, food service operators, consumers, regulators, scientists, educators, and the media. Their behavior can be shaped by their awareness of food safety hazards; their technical, financial, and other capabilities to apply effective mitigating practices; and prevailing rules, incentives, and other motivators. Food safety outcomes can be strongly influenced by policies, investments, and other interventions. These alter the awareness, capabilities, and practices of stakeholders, from farm to fork. Well-functioning markets can provide incentives for farmers and food business operators to supply products that match the safety characteristics consumers demand. Even so, there are many circumstances stemming from problems of information and costs where pure market signals fail and additional measures are needed. Problems of information include the actual attributes of food products, and the location and origins of food safety hazards.

Dengwen Pang, Meizhu Chen, Chengwen Xiao et al.

Guy Tchuente

This paper asks whether regulatory monitoring exhibits nonlinear capacity limits as the scale and complexity of the regulated environment increase. Using a county--year panel of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspections merged with local establishment counts, we identify a sharp breakpoint: beyond a threshold scale, severe inspection findings rise while inspection effort per establishment flattens or declines. The threshold and the post-break deterioration vary across food-related industry groups and shift with proxies for local density and connectedness, consistent with monitoring becoming ``too big to monitor" in more interconnected production environments rather than driven by simple reallocation or delay. Methodologically, we provide a portable breakpoint selection and piecewise-estimation framework that can be applied to other enforcement settings.

Dhananga Senanayake, P. Torley, J. Chandrapala et al.

A rapidly growing population, resource scarcity, and the future sustainability of our food supply are among the major concerns of today’s food industry. The importance of resilient food crops that will sustain in the future is imperative, and legumes are ideal future food crops owing to their rich nutrient profile, cost-effective production and resource usage efficiency. Furthermore, they have the potential to meet the protein needs of the future. There are however several limitations associated with legumes in terms of their sensory, nutritional, and functional properties, which make them challenging for the food industry to use. In this review, these challenges are discussed in detail with particular reference to fermentation as a strategy for overcoming them. A major focus is on examining the potential application of fermentation for modifying techno-functional properties, such as foaming and emulsifying properties, solubility, and water and oil binding capacities of legume substrates. In many studies, fermentation has been demonstrated to enhance the techno-functional, sensory and nutritional attributes of various legume substrates. Future studies must focus on developing scalable fermentation processes to utilize the technology for improving the techno-functional and sensory properties of legume-based ingredients at industrial scale.

Nontobeko Xolisiwe Zulu, Angela Parry-Hanson Kunadu, Eugenie Kayitesi et al.

The demand for dried starter cultures that are specific to indigenous fermented food products is increasing. In most cases, skim milk (SM) powder is used as a cryoprotectant for microbial cell protection during the preparation of starter cultures. However, the extent of cell protection during freeze-drying and the fermentation efficacy of dried cultures are dependent on the type of microbial strain and carrier media, hence the need to investigate the protective effects of alternative carrier media. This study evaluated the fermentation potential of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) preserved in coconut (CCN) powder and SM powder during ting (traditional fermented sorghum) production. Ting was fermented with single and mixed strains of Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactobacillus brevis. The pH, total titratable acidity (TTA), functional groups (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy [FTIR]), microbial quality, and consumer acceptability were monitored during fermentation. Ting prepared with LAB strains preserved in SM had a more rapid reduction (p>0.05) in pH and lower final pH than ting prepared with LAB preserved in CCN. Mixed LAB strains showed a rapid reduction in pH of ting compared to single LAB strains and ting prepared with spontaneous fermentation. The highest TTA (3.57%) was observed with mixed LAB after 48 h on both SM and CCN ting. FTIR showed similar functional groups corresponding to O–H and phenolic compounds for both SM and CCN ting. The highest increase in LAB counts (up to 10 log CFU/mL) occurred in ting prepared with mixed strains of both CCN and SM, while the least increase occurred with spontaneously fermented ting. Enterobacteriaceae, yeasts, and molds were not detected in all the fermented samples. With consumer acceptability, CCN ting was the most preferred sample with the highest overall score (6.95), followed by the SM ting sample (5.67). In conclusion, this work indicates that the LAB strains preserved in CCN result in comparable fermentation performance to that of SM and produce ting that is preferred by consumers. Therefore, CCN should be considered as a carrier medium for the development of ting starter cultures.

Damrongvudhi Onwimol, Pongsan Chakranon, Kris Wonggasem et al.

Hyperspectral imaging was employed to capture spectral information from entire trays of hemp seeds. Individual seed spectral data was extracted using a region-of-interest analysis, isolating each seed for detailed examination. To simplify the analysis and reduce computational complexity, a subset of key spectral wavelengths was selected using a successive projection algorithm. Deep learning models were trained on these selected wavelengths to directly learn patterns from the raw spectral data. The performance of these deep learning models was compared to traditional machine learning approaches. Particularly, an EfficientNetB0 convolutional neural networks achieved the most impressive results, demonstrating a high sensitivity of 98.85, a specificity of 99.22, and a Matthews correlation coefficient of 0.98. It indicated its ability to accurately distinguish between high-vigor and low-vigor hemp seeds. Our findings demonstrated the potential of data-driven models trained on hyperspectral imaging data for non-destructive assessment of hemp seed vigor. This approach offers an advantage over traditional methods, which often involve destructive testing or time-consuming manual evaluation. By enabling rapid and objective seed selection, this technology can improve the efficiency of hemp seed production and ultimately lead to higher crop yields. This innovative approach has the potential to revolutionize the agricultural industry by providing a powerful tool for assessing seed quality and optimizing crop production.

Claudia A Carrillo, Claudia Arriaga, Chloe Smith et al.

Karolina Krupa-Kotara, Karolina Krupa-Kotara, Agnieszka Gdańska et al.

BackgroundAging populations face health and psychosocial challenges that can affect their quality of life. This study aimed to examine the relationship between self-esteem and selected health indicators among older women in Poland.MethodsSix hundred women aged 60+ attending Third Age Universities were surveyed. BMI, waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), daily physical activity (steps), fasting glucose and cholesterol levels, and self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale) were assessed.ResultsAdverse health indicators such as high BMI, WHR, and elevated glucose were associated with lower self-esteem (p &lt; 0.05). Cholesterol levels showed no significant relationship.ConclusionThese findings suggest that maintaining a healthy lifestyle and metabolic balance may contribute to better psychological wellbeing for older women. Community-based physical activity initiatives may support psychological wellbeing among postmenopausal women.

S. Calgaro, I. Avagnina, A. Vettor et al.

BackgroundStunting is a major public health problem, especially in developing countries. In 2020, 37.5% of children under 5 years in Mozambique were stunted.ObjectivesThis study aims to describe the nutritional practices in a cohort of Mozambican children and to compare them with international recommendations. The secondary objective is to find differences between chronic malnourished (M) versus non-malnourished (NM) children and to detect factors related to malnutrition.MethodsA retrospective study was conducted, including children admitted to Beira Central Hospital in Mozambique, using a questionnaire focusing on early nutritional and complementary feeding (CF) practices. We compared the clinical and feeding characteristics of M and NM children and conducted logistic regression to identify factors associated with chronic malnutrition. Data management was performed using Microsoft Excel Office 365 and statistical analysis with Jamovi (version 2.3).ResultsA total of 103 children were studied (median age: 19 months). Seventy percent were exclusively breastfed, 56% continued breastfeeding during CF, but only 8% breastfed until 2 years of age. The introduction of CF occurred at a median age of 6 months, with the main reason being the baby’s crying. Sugar, salt, and sugary drinks were introduced before 1 year of age. At the time of the survey, 42% of the children’s diets were adequately varied. Statistical analysis showed that M children had statistically significant differences in birth weight percentile, were less likely to be breastfed, and consumed fewer dairy products than NM children. Multivariate logistic regression showed that risk factors for chronic malnutrition included HIV infection in both mother and child (OR: 7.5, 95% CI: 1.6–35.09), unaware initiation of CF (OR: 4.35, 95% CI: 1.45–13.05), and birth weight below the 10th percentile (OR: 3.26, 95% CI: 1.02–10.47). In contrast, early and frequent dairy consumption, as well as ongoing maternal breastfeeding during CF, were identified as protective factors.ConclusionIn our population, the percentage of children with a minimally acceptable diet was low. The use of human milk could be increased, and mistakes in CF practices could be corrected. Our findings highlight the need to raise awareness about the importance of breastfeeding and the timely introduction of appropriately composed CF. Increased attention should be given to children suffering from HIV, with lower birth weights, less breastfeeding, and lower dairy product consumption, in order to prevent malnutrition.

Yanyan Pan, Gang Yang, Dan Wu et al.

Colonic mucus and gut microbiota closely linked through mutual regulatory effect. While their alterations during sepsis and whether glutamine can maintain the colonic mucus barrier and gut microbiota stability are unclear. Cecal ligation and puncture-induced sepsis in mice was utilized to observe changes in colonic mucus, gut microbiota, and their interaction with glutamine intervention. Our findings indicated that glutamine mitigated sepsis-induced intestinal damage and restores colonic mucus barrier function by augmenting mucin synthesis. Further analysis revealed that goblet cells were under oxidative stress after sepsis, resulting in anterior gradient-2 (AGR2), the key mucin-modifying enzyme, being dissynthesized, and inhibiting mucin 2 (MUC2) maturation. Glutamine could ameliorates this situation by promoting the key enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) glycosylation in the pentose phosphate pathway, increasing the reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) synthesis, reducing endoplasmic reticulum stress, and accelerating AGR2 synthesis and MUC2 maturation. Additionally, glutamine aided in maintaining gut microbiota stability during sepsis, up-regulating mucin-associated bacteria such as Akkermansia and Alistipes. These bacteria, intimately linked to mucin synthesis and degradation, may impact intestinal mucus stability. In conclusion, glutamine can maintain goblet cell redox balance, promotes AGR2 synthesis and MUC2 maturation, shields the mucus barrier, and potentially maintains gut microbiota stability by regulating the interaction between bacteria and mucus, thus alleviating sepsis-induced intestinal damage.

Runyu Wang, Haotian Zhong

Urban food delivery services have become an integral part of daily life, yet their mobility and environmental externalities remain poorly addressed by planners. Most studies neglect whether consumers pay enough to internalize the broader social costs of these services. This study quantifies the value of access to and use of food delivery services in Beijing, China, through two discrete choice experiments. The first measures willingness to accept compensation for giving up access, with a median value of CNY588 (approximately USD80). The second captures willingness to pay for reduced waiting time and improved reliability, showing valuations far exceeding typical delivery fees (e.g., CNY96.6/hour and CNY4.83/min at work). These results suggest a substantial consumer surplus and a clear underpricing problem. These findings highlight the need for urban planning to integrate digital service economies into pricing and mobility frameworks. We propose a quantity-based pricing model that targets delivery speed rather than order volume, addressing the primary source of externalities while maintaining net welfare gains. This approach offers a pragmatic, equity-conscious strategy to curb delivery-related congestion, emissions, and safety risks, especially in dense urban cores.

Areeg Fahad Rasheed, M. Zarkoosh, Shimam Amer Chasib et al.

The primary objective of this study is to demonstrate the impact of data augmentation using ChatGPT-4o-mini on food hazard and product analysis. The augmented data is generated using ChatGPT-4o-mini and subsequently used to train two large language models: RoBERTa-base and Flan-T5-base. The models are evaluated on test sets. The results indicate that using augmented data helped improve model performance across key metrics, including recall, F1 score, precision, and accuracy, compared to using only the provided dataset. The full code, including model training and the augmented dataset, can be found in this repository: https://github.com/AREEG94FAHAD/food-hazard-prdouct-cls

Luis-Felipe Arizmendi

The Inca Empire developed a sophisticated food production system, social organisation, and knowledge transmission without money or writing. The article introduces the concept of a barter economy structured through hierarchical cooperation and examines the Inca model from a practice-based (heuristical) perspective.

Shabnam Hassani, Mehrdad Sabetzadeh, Daniel Amyot

As Industry 4.0 transforms the food industry, the role of software in achieving compliance with food-safety regulations is becoming increasingly critical. Food-safety regulations, like those in many legal domains, have largely been articulated in a technology-independent manner to ensure their longevity and broad applicability. However, this approach leaves a gap between the regulations and the modern systems and software increasingly used to implement them. In this article, we pursue two main goals. First, we conduct a Grounded Theory study of food-safety regulations and develop a conceptual characterization of food-safety concepts that closely relate to systems and software requirements. Second, we examine the effectiveness of two families of large language models (LLMs) -- BERT and GPT -- in automatically classifying legal provisions based on requirements-related food-safety concepts. Our results show that: (a) when fine-tuned, the accuracy differences between the best-performing models in the BERT and GPT families are relatively small. Nevertheless, the most powerful model in our experiments, GPT-4o, still achieves the highest accuracy, with an average Precision of 89% and an average Recall of 87%; (b) few-shot learning with GPT-4o increases Recall to 97% but decreases Precision to 65%, suggesting a trade-off between fine-tuning and few-shot learning; (c) despite our training examples being drawn exclusively from Canadian regulations, LLM-based classification performs consistently well on test provisions from the US, indicating a degree of generalizability across regulatory jurisdictions; and (d) for our classification task, LLMs significantly outperform simpler baselines constructed using long short-term memory (LSTM) networks and automatic keyword extraction.

Muhammad Waqas Shabbir, Sagor Biswas, Rohit Kajla et al.

Scattering and absorption are fundamental processes in optical engineering and applications. This study investigates the use of the food dye tartrazine to design refractive index fluids that enhance light propagation through scattering media. The optical properties of the solutions were carefully examined using spectrometry and ellipsometry under two extreme conditions, emphasizing the importance of a comprehensive understanding of dye solutions. Additionally, we demonstrated using dye molecules to control light propagation through scattering media. Our findings highlight the potential of food dyes as cost-effective, environmentally friendly alternatives for future advancements in biomedical imaging, optical communication, and photonic devices.

Bela Scapec, Jozo Grgic, Dorian Varovic et al.

Background Caffeine is one of the most popular ergogenic aids consumed by athletes. Caffeine’s ergogenic effect has been generally explained by its ability to bind to adenosine receptors, thus modulating pain and reducing perceived exertion. Another pharmacological agent that may improve performance due to its analgesic proprieties is paracetamol. This study aimed to explore the effects of caffeine, paracetamol, and caffeine + paracetamol consumption on muscular endurance, strength, power, anaerobic endurance, and jumping performance.Methods In this randomized, crossover, double-blind study, 29 resistance-trained participants (11 men and 18 women) ingested either a placebo, caffeine (3 mg/kg), paracetamol (1500 mg) or caffeine + paracetamol 45 min before the testing sessions. The testing sessions included performing the bench press exercise with 75% of one-repetition maximum to momentary muscular failure, isokinetic knee extension and flexion at angular velocities of 60°/sec and 180°/sec, Wingate, and countermovement jump (CMJ) tests.Results Compared to placebo, isolated caffeine ingestion increased the number of repetitions performed in the bench press (p = 0.005; d = 0.42). Compared to placebo, isolated caffeine ingestion and/or caffeine + paracetamol consumption was ergogenic for strength (torque), muscular endurance (total work), or power in the isokinetic assessment, particularly at slower angular velocities (p = 0.027 to 0.002; d = 0.16 to 0.26). No significant differences between the conditions were observed for outcomes related to the Wingate and CMJ tests.Conclusion This study provided novel evidence into the effectiveness of caffeine, paracetamol, and their combination on exercise performance. We found improvements in muscular endurance, strength, or power only when caffeine was consumed in isolation, or in combination with paracetamol. Isolated paracetamol consumption did not improve performance for any of the analyzed outcomes, thus calling into question its ergogenic potential.

Zheyuan Zhang, Yiyang Li, Nhi Ha Lan Le et al.

Diet plays a critical role in human health, yet tailoring dietary reasoning to individual health conditions remains a major challenge. Nutrition Question Answering (QA) has emerged as a popular method for addressing this problem. However, current research faces two critical limitations. On one hand, the absence of datasets involving user-specific medical information severely limits \textit{personalization}. This challenge is further compounded by the wide variability in individual health needs. On the other hand, while large language models (LLMs), a popular solution for this task, demonstrate strong reasoning abilities, they struggle with the domain-specific complexities of personalized healthy dietary reasoning, and existing benchmarks fail to capture these challenges. To address these gaps, we introduce the Nutritional Graph Question Answering (NGQA) benchmark, the first graph question answering dataset designed for personalized nutritional health reasoning. NGQA leverages data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and the Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS) to evaluate whether a food is healthy for a specific user, supported by explanations of the key contributing nutrients. The benchmark incorporates three question complexity settings and evaluates reasoning across three downstream tasks. Extensive experiments with LLM backbones and baseline models demonstrate that the NGQA benchmark effectively challenges existing models. In sum, NGQA addresses a critical real-world problem while advancing GraphQA research with a novel domain-specific benchmark.