Large-scale Food Research Articles

Large scale land investments and food security in agropastoral areas of Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, large scale land investments have been expanding into pastoral regions. However, little is known about the consequences of these investments on the food security of the pastoral community. Using Living Standard Measurement Survey data of the World Bank, we find that, on average, about 32% of the respondents from the (agro-)pastoral regions are food insecure. After controlling for confounders, proximity to large scale land investments is associated with additional food intake of up to 745 kcal per day per adult compared to the households located farther away from a large scale land investment. Proximity to large scale land investment has no significant effect on the coping strategies based food security. For households located in proximity to a large scale land investment, food intake significantly increases with access to roads and markets. Proximity to a large scale land investment has a positive effect on household food consumption not necessarily because of direct benefits from large scale land investments, but due to land and soil quality near the large scale land investments.

Early Holocene Scandinavian foragers on a journey to affluence: Mesolithic fish exploitation, seasonal abundance and storage investigated through strontium isotope ratios by laser ablation (LA-MC-ICP-MS).

At Norje Sunnansund, an Early Holocene settlement in southern Sweden, the world's earliest evidence of fermentation has been interpreted as a method of managing long-term and large-scale food surplus. While an advanced fishery is suggested by the number of recovered fish bones, until now it has not been possible to identify the origin of the fish, or whether and how their seasonal migration was exploited. We analysed strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) in 16 cyprinid and 8 pike teeth, which were recovered at the site, both from within the fermentation pit and from different areas outside of it, by using laser ablation multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Our investigation indicates three different regions of origin for the fish at the site. We find that the most commonly fermented fish, cyprinids (roach), were caught in the autumn during their seasonal migration from the Baltic Sea to the sheltered stream and lake next to the site. This is in contrast to the cyprinids from other areas of the site, which were caught when migrating from nearby estuaries and the Baltic Sea coast during late spring. The pikes from the fermentation pit were caught in the autumn as by-catch to the mainly targeted roach while moving from the nearby Baltic Sea coast. Lastly, the pikes from outside the fermentation pit were likely caught as they migrated from nearby waters in sedimentary bedrock areas to the south of the site, to spawn in early spring. Combined, these data suggest an advanced fishery with the ability to combine optimal use of seasonal fish abundance at different times of the year. Our results offer insights into the practice of delayed-return consumption patterns, provide a more complete view of the storage system used, and increase our understanding of Early Holocene sedentism among northern hunter-fisher-gatherers. By applying advanced strontium isotope analyses to archaeological material integrated into an ecological setting, we present a methodology that can be used elsewhere to enhance our understanding of the otherwise elusive indications of storage practices and fish exploitation patterns among ancient foraging societies.

FlavorGraph: a large-scale food-chemical graph for generating food representations and recommending food pairings

Food pairing has not yet been fully pioneered, despite our everyday experience with food and the large amount of food data available on the web. The complementary food pairings discovered thus far created by the intuition of talented chefs, not by scientific knowledge or statistical learning. We introduce FlavorGraph which is a large-scale food graph by relations extracted from million food recipes and information of 1,561 flavor molecules from food databases. We analyze the chemical and statistical relations of FlavorGraph and apply our graph embedding method to better represent foods in dense vectors. Our graph embedding method is a modification of metapath2vec with an additional chemical property learning layer and quantitatively outperforms other baseline methods in food clustering. Food pairing suggestions made based on the food representations of FlavorGraph help achieve better results than previous works, and the suggestions can also be used to predict relations between compounds and foods. Our research offers a new perspective on not only food pairing techniques but also food science in general.

The establishment of large-scale food retailing in emerging countries and its impact on the supply chain

The establishment of large-scale food retailing in emerging countries and its impact on the supply chain

An outbreak of food poisoning due to Escherichia coli serotype O7:H4 carrying astA for enteroaggregative E. coli heat-stable enterotoxin1 (EAST1).

In June 2020, a large-scale food poisoning outbreak involving about 3000 elementary and junior high school students occurred in Yashio, Saitama, Japan. A school lunch was the only food stuff ingested by all of the patients. Escherichia coli serotype O7:H4 carrying the astA gene for enteroaggregative E. coli (EAggEC) heat-stable enterotoxin 1 (EAST1) was detected in faecal specimens from the patients, and sample inspection revealed its presence in a seaweed salad and red seaweed (Gigartina tenella) as one of the raw materials. Analysis of the antibiotic sensitivity of the isolates revealed resistance to ampicillin and cefotaxime. All isolates were confirmed to be of the same origin by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis after digestion with the restriction enzyme XbaI, and single nucleotide polymorphism analysis using whole genome sequencing. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a large-scale food poisoning caused by E. coli O7:H4, which lacks well-characterized virulence genes other than astA.

Long-Term Mental Health Costs of the Great Chinese Famine

The Great Chinese Famine (1959–61) claimed tens of millions of lives. However, its long-term mental health costs on those who survived remains unexamined. To address this gap, we calculate the famine intensity of prefecture-level regions across China from a rich set of death records and use its variation and data from a recent nationally representative survey to identify the long-term effects of the famine on the mental health of those in rural areas who experienced the famine in the early years of their lives. Difference-in-differences estimates revealed that a one-standard-deviation rise in the experienced famine intensity predicts a 2.3% increase in the probability of severe depressive symptoms (or about 24.8% of the mean). This roughly translates into 3.77 million cases caused by the famine, which is quite likely an undercount. The main mediating channels of this effect include starvation experience, unequal resource allocation, and toxic stress. Our findings shed new light on how large-scale food security failures may impact the mental well-being of the survivors.

Understanding the impact of human resource practices on employee competencies: evidence from Indian food processing industry

PurposeThe study aims at understanding the impact of individual and bundle of human resource practices (HRPs) on employee competencies. It also compares the impact of the bundle of HRPs with individual HRPs on employee competencies to examine the synergy effect.Design/methodology/approachTo test the hypothesis, a sample of 229 respondents from the Indian food processing industry was taken. This included managerial and nonmanagerial personnel from four large scale food processing firms. The impact was analyzed through several structural equations.FindingsThe individual HRPs are positively related to employee competencies. Recruitment and selection have the least impact, and employee participation has the maximum impact on employee competencies. However, the bundle of HRPs has a positive and stronger impact on employee competencies than when they are studied individually.Practical implicationsThe results of this study bring a wide array of managerial implications for the food processing industry. It recommends the management to adopt proper and well-structured HRPs for the food processing industry.Originality/valueThis is one of the few studies that utilizes resource-based view (RBV) and human capital theory (HCT) for investigating the relationship between HRPs and employee competencies in the Indian context. It attempts to increase the understanding regarding an important strategic HR concept (i.e. bundle of HRPs) on employee competencies.

Addressing the Fortification Quality Gap: A Proposed Way Forward.

Large-scale food fortification is an effective, sustainable, and scalable intervention to address vitamin and mineral deficiencies, however, pressing gaps exist globally around ensuring the quality of fortified foods. This paper summarizes the global challenges and gaps faced in monitoring the quality of fortified foods, the guidance produced in response to these challenges, where we are today in terms of effective implementation, and what approaches and opportunities may be usefully applied to enhance the quality of fortified foods moving forward.

The Coexistence of Local and Global Food Supply Chains: The Lombardy Region Case Study

Over the last years, the trust of consumers in the quality and sustainability of the food system has weakened due to the disconnection between producers and consumers. Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) and Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs), born out of the perceived loss of trust in the globalized food system, are trying to shorten the gap between farmers and consumers. Nowadays, many scholars agree that local and global food systems coexist, and consumers usually buy both in local and in global food chains. Our study aims to understand the factors that affect the development of AFNs with a specific focus on the interactions with small- and large-scale food retailing in the Lombardy region in the north of Italy. We employ an Ordinary Least Square (OLS) model, on a municipal scale, in which the dependent variable measures the number of participatory activities carried out by farmers and consumers in AFNs. The main results highlight that conventional large retailers and alternative food networks are linked, and that the coexistence of the two market channels may lead to the development for both of them. Contrarily, where small stores exist, they may compete with an alternative food channel, as they offer similar products and services.

Isolation and characterization of staphylococcus aureus from two large-scale food poisoning outbreaks in Vietnam

In Vietnam and around the world, Staphylococcus aureus remains a major hazard of food safety and food poisoning. S. aureus is present in many places and easily contaminates food production during processing chains. In this study, we successfully isolated S. aureus strains from suspected samples of two food borne poisoning outbreaks in Ha Giang and Vinh Phuc in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The collected samples were examined for presence of staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs) by using 3MTMTECRATM Staph Enterotoxin kit, from there all the samples were positive with SEs. Different strains of S. aureus were isolated and then confirmed by MALDI-TOF technique. Those strains then were stored in Brain heart solution with 15% glycerol until further analysis. Our results identified three STs, ST96, ST88 (spa type t7558), and ST72 (spa type t3092), were responsible for two outbreaks. Two virulence genes detected from the above strains were sea and sec. Furthermore, these strains are test for antibiotic resistance susceptibility with commonly antibiotics. Penicillin are found to be resisted by all three STs, in particularly, ST96 and ST88 are both resistant to erythromycin while ST72 is resistant to gentamicin. Taken together, our study highlights the usefulness of molecular characterization to study and monitor bacterial pathogens associated with food poisoning outbreaks in Vietnam.

Methylmercury biomagnification in aquatic food webs of Poyang Lake, China: Insights from amino acid signatures

As the dominant mercury species in fish, methylmercury (MeHg) biomagnifies during its trophic transfer through aquatic food webs. MeHg is known to bind to cysteine, forming the complex of MeHg-cysteine. However, relationship between MeHg and cysteine in large-scale food webs has not been explored and contrasted with MeHg biomagnification models. Here, we quantified the compound-specific nitrogen isotopic analysis of amino acids (CSIA-AA), MeHg, and amino acid composition in aquatic organisms of Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China. The trophic positions (TPAA) of organisms ranged from 1.0 ± 0.1–3.7 ± 0.2 based on CSIA-AA approach. The trophic magnification factor (TMF) of MeHg, derived from the regression slope of Log-transformed MeHg in organisms upon their TPAA for the entire food web was 9.5 ± 0.5. Significantly positive regression between MeHg and cysteine (R2 = 0.64, p < 0.01) was documented, suggesting MeHg-cysteine complex may potentially play a critical role in the bioaccumulation of MeHg. Furthermore, TMFs of MeHg calculated with and without cysteine normalization compared well (7.7–8.7) when excluding primary producers. Our results implied that MeHg may biomagnify as the complex of MeHg-cysteine and contribute to our understanding of MeHg trophic transfer at the molecular level.

Salmonellosis Outbreak After a Large-Scale Food Event in Virginia, 2017.

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) identified an outbreak of Salmonella serotype Javiana infections in Virginia after a chili and chowder cook-off with 11 competitors and about 2500 attendees on September 30, 2017. The objectives of this study were to assess the extent of the outbreak and identify the most likely source of exposure. To identify people with suspected Salmonella infection, VDH used press releases and social media posts to recruit event attendees to take an online survey about foods eaten at the cook-off and any gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms experienced. VDH defined a case as reported GI illness that occurred within 1 week after eating food from the cook-off. Confirmed cases required a clinical specimen culture positive for Salmonella. Probable cases reported diarrhea or related clinical symptoms. "Not ill" people did not report GI illness. Investigators calculated unadjusted relative risks of illness and performed stratified analysis to address potential confounding. Available food samples were tested for Salmonella. Environmental health specialists interviewed food handlers and inspected restaurants where 3 competitors had prepared food. Of 438 survey responses, 171 (39%) met the case definition. Of all chilies and chowders consumed, Chowder A was associated with the highest relative risk of illness (8.9; 95% CI, 5.7-13.7). A Chowder A sample tested positive for Salmonella serotype Javiana. The environmental investigation did not identify an original contamination source but did find deficiencies in maintaining safe cooking temperatures. Epidemiologic and laboratory findings indicated that Chowder A was the most likely cause of outbreak. Recommendations to prevent future outbreaks include preparation of all food on-site to ensure safe temperatures during food preparation and service.

Micronutrient Fortification of Commercially Available Biscuits Is Predicted to Have Minimal Impact on Prevalence of Inadequate Micronutrient Intakes: Modeling of National Dietary Data From Cameroon.

ABSTRACTBackgroundVoluntarily fortified snack products are increasingly available but are not necessarily formulated to meet known dietary nutrient gaps, so potential impacts on population micronutrient intake adequacy are uncertain.ObjectivesWe modeled the impacts of hypothetical micronutrient-fortified biscuits on inadequate micronutrient intake in children and women of reproductive age (WRA) in Cameroon.MethodsIn a nationally representative survey stratified by macro-region (North, South, and Yaoundé/Douala), 24-h dietary recall data were collected from 883 children aged 12–59 mo and from 912 WRA. We estimated usual nutrient intake by the National Cancer Institute method for vitamin A, folate, vitamin B-12, zinc, and iron. We simulated the impact of biscuit fortification on prevalence of micronutrient intake below the estimated average requirement, given observed biscuit consumption, in the presence and absence of large-scale food fortification (LSFF) programs.ResultsBiscuit consumption in the prior 24-h by children and WRA, respectively, ranged from 4.5% and 1.5% in the South, to 20.7% and 5.9% in Yaoundé/Douala. In the absence of LSFF programs, biscuits fortified with retinol (600 μg/100 g), folic acid (300 μg/100 g), and zinc (8 mg/100 g) were predicted to reduce the prevalence of inadequacy among children by 10.3 ± 4.4, 13.2 ± 4.2, and 12.0 ± 6.1 percentage points, respectively, in Yaoundé/Douala. However, when existing vitamin A–fortified oil, and folic acid–fortified and zinc-fortified wheat flour programs were considered, the additional impacts of fortified biscuits were reduced substantially. Micronutrient-fortified biscuits were predicted to have minimal impact on dietary inadequacy in WRA, with or without LSFF programs.ConclusionsGiven observed patterns of biscuit consumption in Cameroon, biscuit fortification is unlikely to reduce dietary inadequacy of studied micronutrients, except possibly for selected nutrients in children in urban areas in the absence of LSFF programs. As voluntary fortification becomes increasingly common, modeling studies could help guide efforts to ensure that fortified products align with public health goals.

Modeling, simulation and machine learning for rapid process control of multiphase flowing foods

Across many modern industries, as technologies have matured, the use of more complex processes involving multiphase materials has increased. In the food industry, multiphase fluids are now relatively wide-spread, in particular, because of the desire to have faster throughput for large-scale food production. In many cases involving transport, such materials consist of a fluidized binder material with embedded particles. As one increases the volume fraction of particles, a corresponding increase in effective overall viscosity occurs. Often, during the process, the material must be heated, for example, to ensure food safety, induce pasteurization, sterilization, etc. For real-time control, this requires rapidly computable models to guide thermal processing, for example by applied electrical induction. In the present analysis, models are developed for the required heating field (electrically induced) and pressure gradient needed in a pipe to heat a multiphase material to a target temperature and to transport the material with a prescribed flow rate.

Functional characteristic of microbial communities in large-scale biotreatment systems of food waste

In order to evaluate microbial community structure dominated metabolic function profiles in large-scale food waste (FW) biotreatment systems, bacterial, archaeal and fungal community associated with metabolic function in high-temperature aerobic fermentation (AF) and anaerobic co-digestion (AcoD) processes were comprehensively investigated in this study. The qPCR results showed the higher gene copies of bacteria and fungi in initial and AF-treated FW compared with AcoD-treated FW, as well as bacteria and archaea in AcoD-treated FW were highly abundant among detected samples. Furthermore, the total abundances of archaea ((1.18–4.88) × 106 copies/ng DNA) in AcoD system were 2–3 orders of magnitude higher than that in other samples (P < 0.01), indicating active archaeal activity in AcoD system. Correlation analysis of microbial community and metabolic function indicated that the higher abundances of Kazachstania, Pyrobaculum, Sulfophobococcus, Lactobacillus and Candida in initial FW had close linkages with lipid metabolism (P < 0.05). Abundant Aspergillus, Staphylococcus, Pelomonas, Corynebacterium, Faecalibacterium, Methanobacterium and Xeromyces in AF system were positively and significantly correlated with high metabolic activities of energy metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid metabolism, fatty acid metabolism, glycosaminoglycan degradation, sulfur metabolism and nitrogen metabolism. As for AcoD system, dominant genera Methanosaeta, Methanoculleus, Methanobacterium, Fastidiosipila, Rikenellaceae RC9, Bifidobacterium and Xeromyces had close relationships with metabolism of cofactors and vitamins, energy metabolism, methane metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism and glycosaminoglycan degradation (P < 0.05). These results are expected to improve the metabolic efficiency by functional microorganism in different large-scale FW treatment systems.

Benchmarking algorithms for food localization and semantic segmentation

The problem of food segmentation is quite challenging since food is characterized by intrinsic high intra-class variability. Also, segmentation of food images taken in-the-wild may be characterized by acquisition artifacts, and that could be problematic for the segmentation algorithms. A proper evaluating of segmentation algorithms is of paramount importance for the design and improvement of food analysis systems that can work in less-than-ideal real scenarios. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of different deep learning-based segmentation algorithms in the context of food. Due to the lack of large-scale food segmentation datasets, we initially create a new dataset composed of 5000 images of 50 diverse food categories. The images are accurately annotated with pixel-wise annotations. In order to test the algorithms under different conditions, the dataset is augmented with the same images but rendered under different acquisition distortions that comprise illuminant change, JPEG compression, Gaussian noise, and Gaussian blur. The final dataset is composed of 120,000 images. Using standard benchmark measures, we conducted extensive experiments to evaluate ten state-of-the-art segmentation algorithms on two tasks: food localization and semantic food segmentation.

Assessing the Coverage of Biofortified Foods: Development and Testing of Methods and Indicators in Musanze, Rwanda.

ABSTRACTBackgroundBiofortification of staple crops has the potential to increase nutrient intakes and improve health outcomes. Despite program data on the number of farming households reached with and growing biofortified crops, information on the coverage of biofortified foods in the general population is often lacking. Such information is needed to ascertain potential for impact and identify bottlenecks to parts of the impact pathway.ObjectivesWe aimed to develop and test methods and indicators for assessing household coverage of biofortified foods.MethodsTo assess biofortification programs, 5 indicators of population-wide household coverage were developed, building on approaches previously used to assess large-scale food fortification programs. These were 1) consumption of the food; 2) awareness of the biofortified food; 3) availability of the biofortified food; 4) consumption of the biofortified food (ever); and 5) consumption of the biofortified food (current). To ensure that the indicators are applicable to different settings they were tested in a cross-sectional household-based cluster survey in rural and peri-urban areas in Musanze District, Rwanda where planting materials for iron-biofortified beans (IBs) and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes (OFSPs) were delivered.ResultsAmong the 242 households surveyed, consumption of beans and sweet potatoes was 99.2% and 96.3%, respectively. Awareness of IBs or OFSPs was 65.7% and 48.8%, and availability was 23.6% and 10.7%, respectively. Overall, 15.3% and 10.7% of households reported ever consuming IBs and OFSPs, and 10.4% and 2.1% of households were currently consuming these foods, respectively. The major bottlenecks to coverage of biofortified foods were awareness and availability.ConclusionsThese methods and indicators fill a gap in the availability of tools to assess coverage of biofortified foods, and the results of the survey highlight their utility for identifying bottlenecks. Further testing is warranted to confirm the generalizability of the coverage indicators and inform their operationalization when deployed in different settings.

Assessing the Coverage of Biofortified Foods: Development and Testing of Methods and Indicators in Musanze, Rwanda

Abstract Objectives Biofortification is a promising approach to increase micronutrient intakes, especially among populations that are hard to reach with other interventions. Information on the coverage of biofortified foods is needed to ascertain potential for impact, understand program performance, and identify bottlenecks. In this study, we aimed to develop and test methods and indicators for assessing household coverage of biofortified foods. Methods We developed five recall-based indicators of household coverage to assess biofortification programs building on approaches previously used to assess targeted and large-scale food fortification programs. These were: 1) consumption of the food; 2) awareness of the biofortified food; 3) availability of the biofortified food; 4) consumption of the biofortified food (ever); and 5) consumption of the biofortified food (current). We tested these indicators in a cross-sectional, cluster, household survey in 20 rural and five peri-urban areas in Musanze, Rwanda where two biofortification programs, i.e., biofortified beans and orange fleshed sweet potatoes (OFSP), were implemented. Results Among the 242 households surveyed, consumption of beans and sweet potatoes was high (99% and 96%, respectively) while awareness of biofortified beans or OFSP was 66% and 49%, respectively, and availability was 24% and 11%, respectively. Overall, 15% and 11% of households had ever consumed biofortified beans and OFSP, respectively, and 10% and 2% of households were currently consuming them, respectively. The major bottlenecks to coverage were awareness and availability of the biofortified foods. Conclusions The proposed methods and indicators fill a gap in the availability of tools to assess biofortification program coverage and the results of the survey highlight their utility for assessing program performance and identifying bottlenecks. Further testing is warranted to confirm the generalizability of the coverage indicators and inform their operationalization when deployed in different contexts. Funding Sources Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation.

A Framework for Evidence-Based Decision Making in Large-Scale Food Fortification Programs

Abstract Objectives The use of evidence on program performance and potential for impact for decision making in food fortification programs is limited and often done in isolation from other micronutrient interventions. We present a framework for fortification stakeholders responsible for making program recommendations and decisions to facilitate and document evidence-based decision making. Methods First, we reviewed the literature to define the key decision makers and decisions necessary for effective fortification program design and delivery, informed by a clear impact pathway. Then we classified decisions by domain, identified data sources and criteria for their assessment, and adapted the GRADE Evidence to Decision framework to summarize the results. Finally, we considered how the framework would apply to different country programs to test its utility. Results Policymakers, particularly government ministries, and the food producers themselves are the most important decision makers in a fortification program, while technical support agencies, donor agencies, and the research community play important roles in translating data and evidence into contextualized recommendations that meet the needs of different decision makers. The main fortification decision types were classified into five domains across the impact pathway: 1) program design (need, food vehicle(s)); 2) program delivery (compliance, quality, coverage); 3) program impact (nutrient intake and status); 4) overlapping micronutrient interventions and/or under-served populations; and 5) decisions to continue or stop programs. Important criteria for the assessment of each decision type included priority, benefits/risks, equity, acceptability, and feasibility among others. Country examples illustrated the importance of coordinating decision-making in the context of overlapping micronutrient interventions to ensure continued safety and impact over time. Conclusions This framework is a practical tool to enable evidence-based decision making by fortification stakeholders. Using evidence in a systematic and transparent way can enable more effective program design, delivery, and ultimately health impacts. Funding Sources Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation.

Food Fortification: The Level of Awareness among Kenyan Consumers.

More than half of the morbidity and mortality cases among children in Kenya are as a result of micronutrient deficiencies (MNDs). Food fortification is considered by the Government of Kenya as a feasible strategy for addressing MNDs. Worldwide, fortification has been proven to be effective since it does not require any change in dietary habits. Success of large-scale food fortification however may depend on consumer awareness of the fortification benefits. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 13 counties to collect information on fortification awareness using structured questionnaires. 1435 respondents were selected using the Lot Quality Assurance Sampling method. Data were analyzed using Stata version 14.0 and statistical significance p < 0.05. The study participants were described using descriptive statistics. The association of sociodemographic characteristics and awareness of fortification was performed using binary logistic regression analysis. The median age of the study participants was 35 years. Only 28% of the respondents were aware of the term “fortification.” Of the respondents, about 27% heard of food fortification through radio. Vernacular radio emerged as the most preferred channel for communicating fortification information among 24.9% of the respondents. Although awareness of vitamins (32%) and minerals (1.5%) was limited, most (76%) respondents reported of existence of health risks for lacking micronutrients. Awareness of food fortification was significantly associated with respondents' occupation (p < 0.001), household size (p=0.012), education levels (p < 0.001), and age (p=0.025). There is need for a wider use of broadcast media sources to modify information and education materials to promote fortification awareness among Kenyan consumers.