Categories Of Ingredients Research Articles

Maternal Nutritional Knowledge and Nutritional Outcome of Children: A Cross-sectional Study from a Developing Country

Objectives: Malnutrition is a state in which a deficiency or excess of nutrients causes adverse effects on the body. Any diet that does not supply a healthy amount of nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and lipids, can cause malnutrition. Malnutrition accounts for half of all childhood deaths worldwide. Pakistan has the second highest infant and child mortality rate in South Asia. Mothers play an important role in providing food and looking after their children; thus, their knowledge has significant importance in their child’s nutritional status and growth outcome. Material and Methods: Maternal nutritional knowledge was assessed using a structured questionnaire, which was divided into multiple sections covering the demographic data, knowledge about various food ingredients, dietary recommendations, and consequences of not following them. Children’s height was measured and plotted on the World Health Organization growth charts for girls and boys under 5 years and the height was measured using Z scores. Data were then analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 23. Chi-square was applied, and a regression analysis was performed. Results: According to the study, the child’s height has a significant association with maternal education (0.008), the mother’s employment (0.04) status, and the area where the child belongs (0.02). Thirty-eight per cent of children have height falling in 3 standard deviation (SD), indicating good height for age. The knowledge score among the mother of the child with good height, that is, 2SD, which is relatively higher than the mother of a child with severe stunting, that is, >−2SD for all the categories of food ingredients, dietary recommendations, and consequences of not following them, Children of educated mothers have good height and physical health. However, the child’s height is not much influenced by specific maternal knowledge of food ingredients, their dietary importance, and daily recommendations. Conclusion: Child growth depends on their mothers’ education, employment, and area of residence but not on their specific knowledge about food. This can highlight the importance of other factors such as genetics, ethnicity, hormonal, metabolism, medical conditions, and environmental factors, in determining a child’s overall height and nutritional status.

Metabolomics analysis reveals the metabolite profiles of Rheum tanguticum grown under different altitudinal gradients

BackgroundPlant growth and quality are often affected by environmental factors, including geographical location, climate, and soil. In this study, we describe the effect of altitudinal differences on the growth and active ingredients in Rheum tanguticum Maxim. ex Balf. (R. tanguticum), a traditional Chinese medicinal herb known for its laxative properties.ResultsThe results showed that plants grown at lower altitudes had better growth performances than those in higher altitude areas. The yield varied by 2.45–23.68 times with altitude, reaching a maximum of 102.01 t/ha. In addition, total anthraquinone and total sennoside contents decreased with increasing altitude, whereas total tannins increased with increasing altitude. The total anthraquinone content of the indicator compound reached 5.15% at five experimental sites, which exceeded the Chinese Pharmacopoeia standard by 70.87%. The content of the other two categories of active ingredients reached a maximum value of 0.94% (total sennosides) and 2.65% (total tannins). Redundancy analysis revealed that annual rainfall, annual average temperature, annual sunshine hours, and pH significantly affected growth and active ingredients. Moreover, key metabolites, such as flavonoids, amino acids and their derivatives, phenolic acids, lipids, and terpenes, were differentially expressed between samples from low- and high-altitude cultivation areas. These metabolites were enriched in the flavonoid and flavonol biosynthetic pathway and the monoterpene biosynthetic pathway.ConclusionsThese results suggest that high anthraquinone content was observed in the lowest-latitude cultivation area due to low rainfall and alkaline soil pH. Key metabolites were significantly upregulated in high-latitude cultivation areas. These results provide a scientific basis for quality control and the systematic cultivation of R. tanguticum.

A Conceptual Framework and Treatment Taxonomy for Respiratory Lung Volume Training (RLVT)

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to describe the theoretical and procedural framework of a novel intervention, Respiratory Lung Volume Training (RLVT), and to implement a standardized treatment taxonomy to operationalize the RLVT treatment paradigm. Study DesignThis study involved a prospective design with a consensus treatment classification process. MethodsThe Respiratory Lung Volume Training (RLVT) paradigm was developed based on biomechanical constructs governing the interactions of the respiratory and phonatory systems in voice production and principles of motor learning theory. In RLVT, higher levels of lung volume during speech are trained using multiple speech breathing targets while providing real-time visual biofeedback with superimposed guidelines for desired lung volume initiation and termination levels. For people with primary muscle tension dysphonia, RLVT can capitalize on non-muscular respiratory forces to increase efficiency of voice production with reduced speaking effort. To define and operationalize the treatment components of RLVT, six investigators with training in RLVT used the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System (RTSS) to delineate the treatment targets, mechanisms of action, ingredients and dosing through a multi-stage, consensus decision-making process. ResultsThe finalized taxonomy for RLVT included four treatment targets, with three addressing the area of Respiratory Function and one addressing Somatosensory Function. For each treatment target, three categories of ingredients were defined: 1) Provide opportunities to practice breathing during voicing/speech, 2) Provide feedback, and 3) Provide volition ingredients. Within each ingredient category, three to seven specific ingredients were ultimately defined to further operationalize RLVT. ConclusionsThe RLVT paradigm is a theoretically driven approach for optimizing speech breathing patterns to increase efficient voice production in people with primary muscle tension dysphonia. By applying a standardized, systematic treatment taxonomy system to specify the components of RLVT, future researchers and clinicians can implement RLVT with improved fidelity and consistency to optimize treatment outcomes.

Food off-odor generation, characterization and recent advances in novel mitigation strategies.

The pronounced perception of off-odors poses a prevalent issue across various categories of food ingredients and processed products, significantly exerting negative effects on the overall quality, processability, and consumer acceptability of both food items and raw materials. Conventional methods such as brining, marinating, and baking, are the main approaches to remove the fishy odor. Although these methods have shown notable efficacy, there are simultaneously inherent drawbacks that ultimately diminish the processability of raw materials, encompassing alterations in the original flavor profiles, the potential generation of harmful substances, restricted application scopes, and the promotion of excessive protein/lipid oxidation. In response to these challenges, recent endeavors have sought to explore innovative deodorization techniques, including emerging physical processing approaches, the development of high-efficiency adsorbent material, biological fermentation methods, and ozone water rinsing. However, the specific mechanisms underpinning the efficacy of these deodorization techniques remain not fully elucidated. This chapter covers the composition of major odor-causing substances in food, the methodologies for their detection, the mechanisms governing their formation, and the ongoing development of deodorization techniques associated with the comparison of their advantages, disadvantages, and application mechanisms. The objective of this chapter is to furnish a theoretical framework for enhancing deodorization efficiency through fostering the development of suitable deodorization technologies in the future.

PSVI-11 Evaluation of the Acid Binding Capacity of Ingredients and Complete Diets Commonly Used for Weanling Pigs

Abstract The objective of this experiment was to measure acid-binding capacity at a pH of 4 (ABC-4) of common feed ingredients and determine additivity in diets. Ingredient categories included: cereal grains, vegetable proteins, animal proteins and milk, vitamin premixes and minerals, amino acids, and fiber sources. A 0.5 g sample of each ingredient was suspended in 50 mL of distilled deionized water and titrated with 0.1 N hydrochloric acid. Sample ABC-4 was calculated as the amount of acid in milliequivalents (meq) required to reduce and maintain 1 kg of ingredient to a pH of 4 with a smaller number believed to be more advantageous. Cereal grains were found to have decreased ABC-4 compared with other ingredients (Table 1). Vegetable proteins had greater ABC-4 with more variation than cereal grains. Soybean meal (SBM) had an ABC-4 of 602 ± 28.2 meq/kg. Soy protein concentrate (737 ± 165.0 meq/kg) and enzymatically treated soybean meal (ESBM; 753 meq/kg) had greater ABC-4 compared with SBM while fermented soybean meal (FSBM; 207 ± 100.0 meq/kg) was less. Fish meal (1,380 ± 150.9 meq/kg) had greater ABC-4 compared with all analyzed vegetable proteins. Spray dried whey powder and whey permeate had slightly less ABC-4 than that of soybean meal with values of 440 and 520 meq/kg, respectively. Zinc oxide (ZnO) and calcium carbonate (CaCO3) had the greatestt ABC-4 among all ingredients with values of 21,863 ± 598.7 and 18,384 ± 769.7 meq/kg, respectively. Following ingredient analysis, a series of diets were created and analyzed to determine additivity by comparing the differences between calculated and analyzed ABC-4. All analyzed diets had less ABC-4 than calculated values; however, analyzed ABC-4 increased in the same magnitude as the calculated values across diets. The first series of diets were arranged in a 2 × 5 factorial consisting of increasing CaCO3 with or without ZnO. There was a ZnO × CaCO3 interaction (P = 0.020) for difference between calculated and analyzed ABC-4 where differences between calculated and analyzed ABC-4 increased (linear, P < 0.001) as CaCO3 increased in diets without ZnO, but not in diets with ZnO. The second series of diets consisted of different levels of SBM with either FSBM or ESBM included at 5% of the diet. Differences between calculated and analyzed values were not different between treatments (P = 0.640). In conclusion, perfect ABC-4 additivity in complete diets was not realized due to lower analyzed than calculated values; however, analyzed ABC-4 still increased as calculated values increased. These data suggest that diet ABC-4 can be adjusted through selection of ingredients but feeding trials are needed to determine its impact on pig performance.

Developing a Personalized Meal Recommendation System for Chinese Older Adults: Observational Cohort Study.

China's older population is facing serious health challenges, including malnutrition and multiple chronic conditions. There is a critical need for tailored food recommendation systems. Knowledge graph-based food recommendations offer considerable promise in delivering personalized nutritional support. However, the integration of disease-based nutritional principles and preference-related requirements needs to be optimized in current recommendation processes. This study aims to develop a knowledge graph-based personalized meal recommendation system for community-dwelling older adults and to conduct preliminary effectiveness testing. We developed ElCombo, a personalized meal recommendation system driven by user profiles and food knowledge graphs. User profiles were established from a survey of 96 community-dwelling older adults. Food knowledge graphs were supported by data from websites of Chinese cuisine recipes and eating history, consisting of 5 entity classes: dishes, ingredients, category of ingredients, nutrients, and diseases, along with their attributes and interrelations. A personalized meal recommendation algorithm was then developed to synthesize this information to generate packaged meals as outputs, considering disease-related nutritional constraints and personal dietary preferences. Furthermore, a validation study using a real-world data set collected from 96 community-dwelling older adults was conducted to assess ElCombo's effectiveness in modifying their dietary habits over a 1-month intervention, using simulated data for impact analysis. Our recommendation system, ElCombo, was evaluated by comparing the dietary diversity and diet quality of its recommended meals with those of the autonomous choices of 96 eligible community-dwelling older adults. Participants were grouped based on whether they had a recorded eating history, with 34 (35%) having and 62 (65%) lacking such data. Simulation experiments based on retrospective data over a 30-day evaluation revealed that ElCombo's meal recommendations consistently had significantly higher diet quality and dietary diversity compared to the older adults' own selections (P<.001). In addition, case studies of 2 older adults, 1 with and 1 without prior eating records, showcased ElCombo's ability to fulfill complex nutritional requirements associated with multiple morbidities, personalized to each individual's health profile and dietary requirements. ElCombo has shown enhanced potential for improving dietary quality and diversity among community-dwelling older adults in simulation tests. The evaluation metrics suggest that the food choices supported by the personalized meal recommendation system surpass autonomous selections. Future research will focus on validating and refining ElCombo's performance in real-world settings, emphasizing the robust management of complex health data. The system's scalability and adaptability pinpoint its potential for making a meaningful impact on the nutritional health of older adults.

Recipe Networks and the Principles of Healthy Food on the Web

People increasingly use the Internet to make food-related choices, prompting research on food recommendation systems. Recently, works that incorporate nutritional constraints into the recommendation process have been proposed to promote healthier recipes. Ingredient substitution is also used, particularly by people motivated to reduce the intake of a specific nutrient or in order to avoid a particular category of ingredients due for instance to allergies. This study takes a complementary approach towards empowering people to make healthier food choices by simplifying the process of identifying plausible recipe substitutions. To achieve this goal, this work constructs a large-scale network of similar recipes, and analyzes this network to reveal interesting properties that have important implications to the development of food recommendation systems.

Marination ingredients on meat quality and safety—a review

Abstract The practice of utilizing various categories of ingredients for marination has been prevalent in both home cooking and the meat industry for an extended period. Meat and meat products treated with various marination ingredients either alone or in combination with multiple marination processes can enhance color, flavor, and tenderness, while also improving their shelf life by reducing the growth of pathogenic microorganisms and lipid oxidation. This narrative review aims to examine all recent scientific literature on various meat and meat products subjected to marination. Through Google Scholar, PubMed, and Web of Science, the review summarizes all recent marinated and marination research articles, including types of marination ingredients, marination method, marinade mechanism, effect on sensory and nutritional quality, safety, shelf life, and health implications, resulting in a comprehensive overview of all information under marinades and marination for all scientists and food sectors concerned. The highlighted information will indicate future directions for the development of marination ingredients in the meat industry.

Dynamic Mixup for Multi-Label Long-Tailed Food Ingredient Recognition

Recognizing the ingredients composition for given food images facilitates the estimation of nutrition facts, which is crucial to various health relevant applications. Nevertheless, ingredient recognition is a multi-label long-tailed classification problem, where each image may contain multiple labels and the class distributions are highly imbalanced. Most existing approaches leverage off-the-shelf Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) for multi-label ingredient recognition, overlooking the long-tailed issue, which results in low accuracy for tail ingredient categories. To address this problem, this paper proposes a dynamic Mixup (D-Mixup) approach, aiming to dynamically augment minority ingredients, in order to boost the recognition performance for tail ingredient categories. Specifically, our D-Mixup approach dynamically selects two training images based on the predictions of the previous training epoch, and generates a new synthetic image to train the recognition network. In this way, the training samples of tailed classes can be dynamically enlarged and better discriminative representations can be learnt for rare classes. Extensive experiments on both VIREO Food-172 dataset and UEC Food-100 dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed D-Mixup method.

HSIFoodIngr-64: A Dataset for Hyperspectral Food-Related Studies and a Benchmark Method on Food Ingredient Retrieval

Food-related issues have attracted increasing attention recently due to its various applications in our daily life, for example, restaurant service and dietary assessment, which are essential for human health management and understanding food characteristics. Many existing datasets are proposed for various food-relevant tasks, e.g., food detection and segmentation. However, most of the datasets are labelled with only dish-level annotations and lack detailed information for the corresponding ingredients. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI), which can explore the emissive characteristics of different objects with a long region of spectral bands, is of great potential for food and ingredient analysis. In the present work, a new food image dataset HSIFoodIngr-64 containing 3,389 pairs of HSI and RGB images with 21 dish classes and 64 ingredient categories was established. It is the first HSI-based food image dataset, of which all images are labelled with dish-level and ingredient-level annotations and corresponding pixel-wise ingredient masks. Therefore, our dataset can be applied to different food-centric tasks. Furthermore, this research proposed a benchmark method on the food ingredient retrieval task, which consists of two sub-networks called IPSN for ingredient prediction sub-network and ERSN for edge refinement sub-network. Extensive experiments were conducted on HSIFoodIngr-64 dataset and the effectiveness of our proposed method was verified. HSIFoodIngr-64 dataset is expected to provide a new perspective on food analysis and inspire more efforts on various food-related issues. We have made the HSIFoodIngr-64 dataset public at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/E7WDNQ.

The Effect of Clean Beauty Product Awareness on Purchasing Behavior and Satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to provide basic data for clean beauty to form and grow a category in Korea's cosmetic industry by studying the effect of clean beauty products awareness on the purchasing behavior and satisfaction. This study conducted an online survey targeting Korean adult women in their 20s to 50s. The results of the study on ‘The Effect of Clean Beauty Products Awareness on the Purchasing Behavior and Satisfaction’ are as follows. First, the awareness of clean beauty products was found to be above average, and it was analyzed that the ratio of recognizing the difference from general cosmetics was high, and interest in clean beauty products was increased compared to the past. As a global trend, clean beauty has emerged as a keyword, and this trend has also affected Korea, suggesting that domestic female consumers' interest in clean beauty has increased. Second, as for the purchasing behavior of clean beauty products, it was found that the higher the awareness of ingredients and ethical consciousness among the perceptions of clean beauty products, the higher the purchasing behavior was. This is considered to be a result of the fact that the importance of the ingredients of consumers has been continuously increasing, and the interest in ethical awareness has recently been highlighted. Third, as a result of analyzing satisfaction with clean beauty products, it was found to have a higher score than average. In addition, it was found that the higher the perception of clean beauty products, the higher the awareness of ingredients, the awareness of ethics, and the awareness of eco-friendliness, the higher the satisfaction. In conclusion, it is necessary to establish a marketing strategy from the product planning stage in consideration of allergen-inducing ingredients in the ingredient category, the exclusion of animal testing in the ethical awareness category, and carbon emission reduction in the eco-friendly category.

PSXI-4 Use of Foodomics Analysis to Biochemically Compare Different pet Food Ingredient Categories

Abstract With an increased focus on pet health and longevity, ingredient nutritional quality and functionality is of great interest to the pet food industry. Characterizing the natural bioactive molecules present in different ingredient categories may identify those most likely to support health and/or manage disease. Over the past couple decades, high-throughput ‘omics’ technologies have been used to characterize the DNA, RNA, proteins, and metabolite profiles of dogs and cats. Similar technologies may now be applied to foods, a process referred to as ‘foodomics’. The objective of this study was to use foodomics analysis to characterize and compare various fruit-, vegetable-, tuber-, legume-, and grain-based ingredients. A total of 35 ingredients were subsampled, ground with liquid nitrogen, and sent to Metabolon, Inc. (Durham, NC) for untargeted high-throughput metabolomics analysis using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Over 640 named bioactive molecules were identified in the samples. Principal component analysis showed that ingredient classes tended to cluster together and separately from others, with distinct fruit-, vegetable-, and grain-based clusters identified. Legumes clustered most closely to tubers and vegetables. Random forest analysis had a nearly perfect predictive accuracy and was used to identify molecules most influential in separating ingredient classes. This dataset has provided a foundation from which the pet foodomics field may grow and has identified molecule signatures specific to ingredient type. Consequent studies may identify bioactive molecules possessing beneficial properties (e.g., antioxidant, antibacterial) that may be used to target obesity or support digestive health, skin and coat health, and joint health. Such analysis may also identify ingredient-specific biomarkers that may increase food consumption accuracy.

Digestible indispensable amino acid scores of animal and plant ingredients potentially used in dog diet formulation: how this protein quality metric is affected by ingredient characteristics and reference amino acid profile.

The ability of a diet or an ingredient to satisfy the indispensable amino acid (IAA) requirements of an individual is a reflection of protein quality (PQ). The concept of PQ is gaining recognition in the pet food industry as a way to identify candidate ingredients for diet formulation. The objective of this report was to use IAA digestibility data from swine and cecectomized rooster assays to generate digestible IAA scores (defined herein as DIAAS-like values) to predict the PQ of ingredients used in dog diets. However, as PQ equation development relies on a reference IAA profile, which is intended to be based on the physiological requirements of a specific population, we sought to generate DIAAS-like values using IAA requirements established by the National Research Council (NRC) as well as practical IAA recommendations presented by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) and European Pet Food Industry Federation (FEDIAF), to assess how these profiles may affect PQ. In total, 30 animal (75 unique inputs) and 27 plant ingredients (94 unique inputs) satisfied all inclusion criteria to be used in the final data set. Ingredients were initially categorized as animal or plant, and further categorized based on AAFCO Official Common and Usual Names and Definitions of Feed Ingredients to allow for additional, more distinct comparisons to be made. Data were analyzed using PROC GLIMMIX in SAS, with ingredient reference as a random effect, and ingredient category, regulatory body, and life stage as fixed effects. As expected, differences were observed in DIAAS-like values for nearly all ingredients and ingredient categories when determined using NRC, AAFCO, or FEDIAF IAA requirements or recommendations as the reference pattern. Moreover, applying reference patterns based on NRC adult maintenance IAA requirements consistently produced the lowest DIAAS-like values. Ultimately, while future studies assessing PQ should utilize NRC minimal requirements, individual ingredient and ingredient category differences in DIAAS-like values when using AAFCO and FEDIAF recommendations underpin the different regulatory approaches to establishing dietary nutrient recommendations that exist globally and support the need for harmonization of dietary recommendations.

National and transnational drug shortages: a quantitative descriptive study of public registers in Europe and the USA

BackgroundDrug shortages are a growing global problem, posing clinical and economic challenges. To understand them better, we conducted an inventory of national public drug shortage registers and their comparability in Europe and the USA.MethodsThe study was based on openly accessible drug shortage notifications published by national drug authorities. These data were obtained from all national data sources mentioned on the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA’s) web page and FDA in the USA. After selection of the countries with comparable data, descriptive statistics were used to present characteristics of the shortages both across countries and within countries for 9 months (January–September) in 2020. We studied whether the shortages that occurred in these countries were the same, and how shortages were distributed by therapeutic uses and formulations. We also investigated price variation between the United States and Finland among drugs in shortage in one formulation category (creams and gels).ResultsFinland, Sweden, Norway, Spain, and the United States had suitable registers and were included. Altogether 5132 shortage reports from Finland (n = 1522), Sweden (n = 890), Norway (n = 800), Spain (n = 814), and the United States (n = 1106) were published during the study period. Of active ingredient level shortages 54% occurred in only one country, and 1% occurred in all five. However, at the country level, where there was one or more shortage notifications in an ATC active ingredient category, 19–41% were in a single country.The distributions by ATC therapeutic class and drug formulation differed substantially between countries, particularly between the USA and European countries. Injectables had a high shortage risk in the USA (57% of all shortages versus 17–31% of all shortages in the European countries). By contrast, shortages in gels and creams occurred only in European data (4–6% of all shortages). In the price comparison, creams and gels in shortage in Finland were 160% more expensive in the USA where these shortages were not detected.ConclusionsPublic drug shortage registers are vital data sources for proactively maintaining and managing a reliable drug supply. However, our study demonstrates that much work remains to standardize the contents and quality of public register data.Shortages may not be solely a consequence of manufacturing disruptions but may reflect other contributing factors in the international drug distribution and supply mechanisms, including price differences and profit margins between national pharmaceutical markets. Data to perform practical and useful international comparisons to understand these shortages are required.

Evaluation of the acid-binding capacity of ingredients and complete diets commonly used for weanling pigs.

Some ingredients bind more acid in the stomach than others which can increase gastric pH in weaned pigs causing decreased protein digestion and allow pathogenic micro-organisms to proliferate. Our objective was to measure acid-binding capacity at a pH of 4 (ABC-4) of common nursery ingredients and determine additivity in diets. Ingredient categories included: cereal grains, vegetable proteins, animal proteins and milk, vitamin premixes and minerals, amino acids, and fiber sources. A 0.5-g sample of each ingredient was suspended in 50 mL of distilled deionized water and titrated with 0.1-N hydrochloric acid. Sample ABC-4 was calculated as the amount of acid in milliequivalents (meq) required to lower 1 kg to a pH of 4. Cereal grains were found to have lower ABC-4 compared to other ingredients. Vegetable proteins had higher ABC-4 with more variation than cereal grains. Soybean meal (SBM) had an ABC-4 of 602 ± 28.2 meq. Soy protein concentrate and enzymatically treated soybean meal (ESBM) had higher ABC-4 compared to SBM while fermented soybean meal (FSBM) was lower. Zinc oxide (ZnO) and calcium carbonate (CaCO3) had the highest ABC-4 among all ingredients with values of 21,863 ± 598.7 and 18,384 ± 769.7 meq, respectively. Following ingredient analysis, a series of diets were analyzed to determine additivity by comparing the differences between calculated and analyzed ABC-4 value. All diets analyzed had lower ABC-4 than calculated values; however, analyzed ABC-4 increased along with calculated values across diets. The first series of diets were arranged in a 2 × 5 factorial consisting of increasing CaCO3 with or without ZnO. There was a ZnO × CaCO3 interaction (P = 0.020) for difference between calculated and analyzed ABC-4. Within the interaction, differences between calculated and analyzed ABC-4 increased (linear, P < 0.001) as CaCO3 increased in diets without ZnO, but not in diets with ZnO. The second series of diets analyzed consisted of different levels of SBM with either FSBM or ESBM included at 5% of the diet. Differences between calculated and analyzed values were not different between treatments (P = 0.640). In conclusion, perfect ABC-4 additivity in diets was not found due to lower analyzed than calculated values; however, analyzed ABC-4 still increased as calculated values increased. This data suggests diet ABC-4 can be adjusted through selection of ingredients but more feeding trials are needed to determine its impact on pig performance.

Judging food by its description: a text mining approach examining the most influential words on restaurant menus

ABSTRACT Previous research regarding menu writing focused on the customers’ perspective, rather than the current practices approach of this study. With the purpose of quantifying and categorizing the word choices most commonly used by restaurant operators, this research used text-mining techniques to develop a database of words used in menu descriptions from a broad cross-section of American casual dining restaurants. The words were categorized and sorted by frequency in order to determine the most common words and categories used. Results showed that categorically, culinary words were used the most in menus while sensory and adjective words were used the least. Within the categories of ingredients, vegetables were most frequently observed while fruits appeared the least in menus. Empirically, the major menu word categories identified in this study can help to update restaurateurs with the current menu word classification. In addition, the words within each category reflect current industry practices, which may be useful to operators in describing menu dishes.

Strategy to Avoid Skin Sensitization: Application to Botanical Cosmetic Ingredients

Assessment of skin sensitization potential is mandatory for ingredients dedicated to topical applications. A battery of in vitro tests covering the key steps of the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) for skin sensitization has been recommended to replace animal testing. However, despite international guidelines on in vitro methods, there is no universal approach defining their combination. The purpose of this work was to assess skin sensitization of botanical ingredients relying on a previously developed in vitro testing strategy. This tool focused on complex and poorly water-soluble substances, which were not already covered. Sixteen botanical extracts were tested in a sequential approach, starting with Sens-Is, supplemented by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in vitro methods when necessary. The results on the selected well-known botanical sensitizers complemented the relevance of the strategy. Testing on experimental botanicals could detect skin sensitizers. In addition, phytochemistry was a determining support to identify and remove the components at the origin of the effect. Altogether, these results enlarged the scope of the methodology to various ingredient categories and chemical natures, contributing to place on the market new ingredients, safe for workers and end-users.

Artificial Tears: Biological Role of Their Ingredients in the Management of Dry Eye Disease.

Dry eye disease (DED) is the most common ocular surface disease, characterized by insufficient production and/or instability of the tear film. Tear substitutes are usually the first line of treatment for patients with DED. Despite the large variety of tear substitutes available on the market, few studies have been performed to compare their performance. There is a need to better understand the specific mechanical and pharmacological roles of each ingredient composing the different formulations. In this review, we describe the main categories of ingredients composing tear substitutes (e.g., viscosity-enhancing agents, electrolytes, osmo-protectants, antioxidants, lipids, surfactants and preservatives) as well as their effects on the ocular surface, and we provide insight into how certain components of tear substitutes may promote corneal wound healing, and/or counteract inflammation. Based on these considerations, we propose an approach to select the most appropriate tear substitute formulations according to the predominant etiological causes of DED.

Human health risk assessment of arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury ingestion from baby foods

Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives reported on the presence of heavy metals in raw ingredients used in baby foods and in finished baby food products themselves. In light of these concerns, this study aimed to evaluate potential risks associated with the presence of heavy metals in baby food products. We analyzed 36 baby food samples representing four ingredient categories (fruit; leguminous vegetable; root vegetable; or grain) for arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb). We assessed the potential lifetime cancer and non-cancer health risks posed to infants and toddlers following daily consumption of these chemicals in each food type, based on established daily food-specific ingestion rates. Daily doses were compared against selected reference values and oral slope factors to determine non-cancer hazard indices (HIs) and lifetime cancer risks. Hazard indices indicated a potential for non-cancer risk (e.g., HIs > 1.0) under only a few exposure scenarios, including for As and Pb under selected product type and age/concentration assumptions. Increases in lifetime cancer risks for all analytes across the ingredient categories evaluated ranged from 3.75 × 10−5 to 5.54 × 10−5; cancer risks were primarily driven by As from grain products. Though a limited set of exposure scenarios indicated a potential for health risk, the exposure assumptions in this assessment were conservative, and the heavy metal concentrations we found in baby foods are similar to those observed in similar whole foods. Based on these findings and the limited scenarios under which risks were identified, this study indicates that an infant’s typical intake of baby food is unlikely to pose health risks from heavy metals above accepted tolerable risk levels under most exposure scenarios.

Measurement of the Acid-Binding Capacity of Common Ingredients and Complete Diets Intended for Weanling Pigs

Some ingredients bind more acid in the stomach than others which can increase gastric pH in weaned pigs, causing decreased protein digestion and allowing pathogenic microorganisms to proliferate. The objective of this experiment was to measure acid-binding capacity at a pH of 4 (ABC-4) of common nursery ingredients and determine additivity in diets. Ingredient categories included: cereal grains, vegetable proteins, animal proteins and milk, vitamin premixes and minerals, amino acids, and fiber sources. A 0.5 g sample of each ingredient was suspended in 50 mL of distilled deionized water and titrated with 0.1 N hydrochloric acid. Sample ABC-4 was calculated as the amount of acid in milliequivalents (meq) required to lower 1 kg of a sample to a pH of 4. Cereal grains were found to have lower ABC-4 compared to other ingredients. Vegetable proteins had higher ABC-4 with more variation than cereal grains. Soy protein concentrate and enzymatically treated soybean meal (ESBM) had higher ABC-4 compared to SBM while fermented soybean meal (FSBM) was lower. Zinc oxide (ZnO) and calcium carbonate (CaCO3) had the highest ABC-4 among all ingredients. Following ingredient analysis, a series of complete diets were analyzed to determine ingredient additivity by comparing the differences between calculated and analyzed ABC-4. Perfect ABC-4 additivity was not found, with all diets having lower analyzed ABC-4 than calculated values; however, the analyzed ABC-4 followed dietary calculated values for higher or lower ABC-4 diet values. These data suggest that ABC-4 diet can be adjusted through selection of ingredients, but feeding trials are needed to determine the impact on pig performance.