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  • Fermented coffee’s fruity aromas demystified

    Fermented coffee’s fruity aromas demystified

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    Newswise — INDIANAPOLIS, March 29, 2023 — Specialty coffees are gaining traction in coffeehouses around the world — and now a fermented version could bring a fruity taste to your morning cup of joe. This new kind of beverage has a raspberry-like taste and aroma, but what causes these sensations has been a mystery. Today, scientists report six compounds that contribute to the fermented coffee experience. The work could help increase production of the drink and make it more readily available for everyone to enjoy.

    The researchers will present their results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2023 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person March 26–30, and features more than 10,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

    “There are now flavors that people are creating that no one would have ever associated with coffee in the past,” says Chahan Yeretzian, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator. “The flavors in fermented coffee, for example, are often more akin to fruit juices.”

    This unusual type of beverage provides a unique flavor experience for consumers, and the growing demand for it means that fermented coffee beans can fetch a high price, potentially benefiting farmers. And the process by which the beans are prepared requires much less water than traditional methods, making it a more environmentally friendly alternative to a standard cup of coffee.

    But despite this drink’s growing popularity, the compounds that cause its distinctive flavor were unknown. And with fermented coffee becoming more popular in competitive events, some people have been concerned that the lack of knowledge about fermented coffee may make it difficult to distinguish between the genuine product and regular joe that has been illicitly adulterated. So, Yeretzian and colleagues from the Coffee Excellence Center at Zurich University of Applied Sciences sought to identify the compounds that are responsible for these new and exciting flavors. And because flavor and smell are intimately linked, studying the beverages’ scents could help the team gain a better understanding of how fermented coffee’s complex flavor is created.

    To single out the compounds unique to fermented coffee’s aromas, researchers took arabica beans and divided them into three groups. One was prepared using a wash process, which is likely how your average afternoon pick-me-up brew is made. Here, a gelatinous substance known as mucilage is stripped from the coffee bean, which is washed with water before being dried. The researchers prepared the second group using the pulped natural process — another common approach — in which the skin is removed from the bean, but the mucilage is left intact. Finally, the team fermented beans in the third group using carbonic maceration, a process often used in winemaking. This method was first introduced to the specialty coffee world in 2015, when the winning contestant in the World Barista Championship used it to prepare their entry. With this process, whole coffee fruits are fermented in stainless steel tanks and infused with carbon dioxide to lower the pH of the fermentation. Unlike the other brews, the coffee made with fermented beans was described as smelling intense, like raspberries with a hint of rose.

    Next, the researchers brewed coffee using each type of bean and analyzed the samples with gas chromatography (GC) sniffing, also called GC olfactometry. First, the GC instrument separated individual components in the air above each sample. Then, as the compounds left the instrument, they went to a mass spectrometer for identification, and to someone sitting at the outlet to describe what they smelled.

    “Because the chemical signature doesn’t tell us how a compound smells, we have to rely on the human nose to detect the scent as each compound comes out of the chromatography instrument individually,” says Yeretzian. This methodology can be tricky because there is a subjective element to it. “We’re using people to detect scents, and everybody perceives flavors a little differently,” says Samo Smrke, Ph.D., a research associate in the lab who is presenting the results. “But in this case, the panel was very consistent in the smells they described. So, what is traditionally considered a challenge was actually not an issue because the aromas were so clear.”

    There is one major advantage to GC sniffing. The human nose can sometimes detect scents from compounds that are at such a low concentration, they’re unable to be picked up by mass spectrometry. In this case, although six compounds appeared to contribute to the intense fruity flavor and the raspberry scent of the fermented coffee, the team was only able to identify three of them: 2-methylpropanal, 3-methylbutanal and ethyl 3-methylbutanoate.

    In the future, the researchers hope to identify the remaining compounds, as well as judge the intensity of different flavors and scents. Additionally, the researchers would like to know more about how these unique compounds form. Potential factors include farming practices, the variety of coffee beans, the microclimate of specific farms and the microbes present during fermentation. “There’s still quite a lot of unknowns surrounding this process,” says Smrke. A better understanding of the sources of these compounds could help the team standardize production methods, making it easier to produce fermented coffee at larger scales and allowing even more people to enjoy this distinctive flavor.

    The researchers acknowledge support and funding from Project Origin Australia and Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

    A recorded media briefing on this topic will be posted Wednesday, March 29, by 10 a.m. Eastern time at www.acs.org/acsspring2023briefings. Reporters can request access to media briefings during the embargo period by contacting [email protected].

    For health and safety information for ACS Spring 2023, please visit the FAQ webpage.  

    The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

    To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact [email protected].

    Note to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

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    Title
    Exploring unique coffee flavours of fermented high-end specialty coffee: Towards the fourth wave coffee 

    Abstract
    Third wave coffee has its origin in the 1970s when coffee businesses started sourcing high-quality specialty coffee and delivering it freshly roasted to consumers. Over the past decade specialty coffee has become ubiquitous, and its market share has continuously grown. Presently, there is no consensus about what the fourth wave could be like. One of the developments has been the emergence of heavily fermented coffees. These exhibit very characteristic, clearly defined, and intense aromas and command a price up to 100-times higher than the commodity market price. Arabica coffee from the farm Iris Estate, Geisha variety, has been post-harvest processed by three methods: washed (W), pulped natural (PN), and fermented by so-called ‘carbonic maceration’ (CM). The aim was to elucidate the impact of CM on the flavour profile, as compared to the W and PN process. Sensory evaluation had revealed that CM creates characteristic flavour notes that were described as raspberry with hint of rose water. The aroma compounds of the roasted and ground coffee were analysed using solid-phase micro extraction gas chromatography (SPME-GC) and detected by both sniffing (GC-O) and mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The study found six compounds that are considered contributing to the characteristic raspberry flavour of the CM coffee. These compounds were consistently identified as intense with raspberry notes when sniffing CM coffee, but not in W coffee. Three out of the six were identified and characterized by means of MS, whereas the other three were detected only by GC-O and could not be characterised by MS. The link of an experimental fermentation post-harvest processing technique to characteristic flavour compounds and sensory notes in the cup could be established. Such studies may ultimately allow such coffees to become scalable and more readily available for everyone to experience and enjoy.

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    American Chemical Society (ACS)

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  • Technology to protect bioactive compounds from food during digestion

    Technology to protect bioactive compounds from food during digestion

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    Newswise — Bioactive compounds present mostly in fruit and vegetables perform different bodily functions relating to health and well-being. Their effects are considered antioxidant, antidiabetic, antiaging and anticancer, among others.

    Many studies are looking for ways to optimize absorption of bioactive compounds by the organism and increase their bioavailability – the proportion that enters the bloodstream after absorption. One way is to coat the compounds with another material and package them on the nanometric scale (a nanometer is a billionth of a meter). Nanoencapsulation, as this technique is known, assures slow release of the compounds so that they take longer to digest and can survive the attacks of bacteria in the gut microbiome.

    An investigation conducted by a duo of researchers at the University of São Paulo’s School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (FCF-USP) in Brazil is one of these studies. Working at the school’s Department of Food Science and Experimental Nutrition, they have produced several articles on the subject – the latest of which, published in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, is a review of the literature on pectin-based nanoencapsulation plus a description of a novel technology developed under the aegis of the Food Research Center (FoRC), a Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center (RIDC) supported by FAPESP.

    “We used pectin extracted from residues of citrus fruit albedo and peel, with a degree of purity permitting human ingestion and excluding any kind of hazardous chemical,” said João Paulo Fabi, one of the authors and a professor at FCF-USP. Albedo is the layer of white spongy material inside the peel of oranges and lemons, for example.

    “In addition to our review of the literature, we describe a novel technology for nanoencapsulation of bioactive compounds using pectin. This entails producing a pectin-lysozyme complex as a protective outer layer for a highly sensitive bioactive compound called anthocyanin,” he explained, adding that lysozyme is “a safely edible substance obtained from egg white and used to enhance the stability of the end-product”.

    Anthocyanins are water-soluble pigments belonging to the flavonoid family. They are phenolic compounds found in all plants and responsible for the shades of red, blue and purple seen in flowers, fruit, leaves, stalks and roots.

    The authors say their methodology can be used to encapsulate other water-soluble bioactive compounds. “We tested anthocyanin because of its challenging sensitivity to many factors, such as light, temperature, pH and gut bacteria,” said Thiécla Katiane Osvaldt Rosales, the other author. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Nuclear and Energy Research Institute (IPEN).

    Besides FoRC, FAPESP also funded the research via support for two other projects (19/11816-8 and 12/23970-2). 

    Advantages of methodology

    According to the researchers, the main advantage of their methodology is that no other compounds are added apart from pectin, lysozyme and anthocyanin. “We used three compounds from sources in nature and mixed them in the laboratory to form a new product, without adding salts, ligands or anything potentially toxic. Furthermore, the nanoparticles are not too small. Very tiny nanoparticles can penetrate barriers and cell membranes, entering the DNA and having toxic effects. The size we obtained is safe,” Fabi said.

    Rosales outlined the process they developed to produce the nanoparticles. “Pectin and lysozyme are heated separately. The increase in temperature partly alters their structure, and they interact better when heated. They are then rapidly cooled to reach a temperature not harmful to anthocyanin, which is sensitive and fairly unstable. The three substances are blended in an aqueous suspension and agitated for an hour. The result is encapsulated anthocyanin. The suspension is then filtered to separate the non-encapsulated contents,” she said.

    Special care is taken with factors such as temperature and pH. “We tested the parameters for the purpose of optimization, especially pH. If pH is too high, the anthocyanin breaks down. It can’t be too low, either. We found a pH of 5 to be optimal for interaction between the molecules,” she explained. “We also tested the duration and intensity of the agitation. We made a point of managing all the details, however minor, because they make a difference in terms of forming stable particles. We’ve applied for a patent on the methodology.”

    Results

    Finally, the encapsulation was tested for efficacy in a digestion system simulated in the laboratory to mimic the gastric and intestinal phases. “The result was that part of the anthocyanin was released during the digestive process, at the end of gastric digestion, and part remained in the nanostructure, with the possibility of release of this remainder in the gut or absorption together with the nanostructure. We believe this was a good outcome. Partial and gradual release suggests absorption of the compound starts before it enters the gut, with the nanoencapsulated remainder probably being released in the gut or fully absorbed with less structural alteration,” Rosales said.

    The next step will be animal testing. “We tested the method in vitro and obtained results indicating that the nanoparticles are safe for consumption. We have evidence that cells can absorb them in a non-toxic manner and that the pectin protects the anthocyanin and its properties. We now have to test it in animals, observing the process of oral ingestion, absorption of the anthocyanin using specific markers for absorption, and the route followed in the organism. It’s important to verify the extent of absorption and the biological destination,” she said.

    The nanoparticles are mainly intended for use as a food supplement. “They can be added to food and dietary supplements, but industrial mass production would be necessary to include them in a supplement,” Fabi said.

    It is worth noting that the method does not require expensive equipment or procedures. “In addition, the material used for the nanocapsules, which comes from byproducts of citrus peel, would make the cost even lower for manufacturers. The pectin we used in our study is available commercially and is used by the food industry, mostly for gel formation in jam or as a thickener,” Rosales said.

    About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

    The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

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    Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

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  • Tart, sour, or sweet? Virginia Tech researchers create hard cider lexicon for accurate, shared descriptions

    Tart, sour, or sweet? Virginia Tech researchers create hard cider lexicon for accurate, shared descriptions

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    Newswise — Citrus, caramelized sugar, vinegary, puckering, sour, and solvent. These are just a handful of the 33 terms that researchers in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences found after conducting a sensory descriptive analysis of hard cider.

    This lexicon didn’t previously exist for hard cider, and its development will aid producers in Virginia’s robust cider industry as well as anyone who chooses to enjoy these beverages. Producers will be able to describe their products with precision and clarity because of the study conducted in the Sensory Evaluation Lab at Virginia Tech.

    Humans can experience upwards of 10,000 unique aromas in both food and beverage, which presents a unique challenge to describe the vast wealth of aromas.

    “Sensory science” is a field within food science that studies reactions people have to food or beverages and allows for differentiation for the flavors people experience from normal language. This science helps people articulate what they are experiencing, similar to how people describe things they touch or the sounds they hear.

    “Because we are minimally trained on using taste and smell, we have a hard time putting a word to a specific taste or smell,” said Martha Calvert, the doctoral student leading the project and graduate research assistant in the Department of Food Science and Technology. “Sensory terms help to distinguish hard cider products and give producers and consumers tools for talking about cider flavors they experience.”

    Funded through a USDA grant, the research was published recently in the Journal of Food Science.

    Creating the lexicon – or any sensory lexicon – is extremely challenging and requires extensively trained panelists before any tastings occur. This training includes using consumer-inclusive language so that the word bank generated by the panelists is usable by the general public.

    To accurately develop the lexicon, all cider tastings were blind, meaning the panelists didn’t know what cider they were drinking. After taking a sip, the panelists would write down every term that could be experienced from that tasting.

    “If one was experiencing tart and, another, sour, we would have a group discussion about what the words mean to us and exactly what we are referring to in our heads so we can pick one term,” Calvert said.

    Repetitive terms were consolidated to eliminate repeating or closely overlapping words. Then panelists picked words that they felt most reliably and clearly articulated their experiences. For example, the panelists equated sour to the traditional sour patch sensation and vinegary to represent a tart-like sensation.

    Of the 33 terms generated, 29 of them varied significantly across the cider samples.

    “This means that most of the terms generated are important to describing sensory quality and distinguishing cider products from each other,” Calvert said. “Some of these terms fit broadly into four categories that I called rich, fruity, sour, and funky.”

    For rich, think caramelized sugar or butter. Fruity could be grape or apple. Funky could be earthy or metallic, and sour could be the sour patch or vinegar taste.

    The researchers, which include Jacob Lahne, an assistant professor in the department and principal investigator of the project, will conduct a validation study in which the terms are grouped based on similarity. Ultimately, the research will be used to generate the cider flavor wheel that both cider producers and consumers will be able to use to help them describe the products that they make and taste.

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    Virginia Tech

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  • FDA issues guidelines on plant-based milk products, expert shares nutrition advice

    FDA issues guidelines on plant-based milk products, expert shares nutrition advice

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    Newswise — New guidelines released by the Food and Drug Administration can help consumers better understand nutritional difference between plant-based and dairy milks, according to a food science expert.

    Some people believe plant-based and dairy milks are nutritionally similar, but that is not thecase, says Melissa Wright, director of the Food Producer Technical Assistant Network at Virginia Tech.

    “It’s important for consumers to educate themselves about what food labels tell us about what we are putting into our bodies. The largest nutritional differences are with protein and carbohydrates,” says Wright. “While plant-based beverages might contain as much protein as dairy milk, the key piece of information that consumers don’t always know is that not all protein is equal when it comes to human digestion.”

    Wright explains that all sources of protein have a PDCAAS, or protein digestibility-correctedamino acid score. This method evaluates the quality of a protein based on the amino acid requirements for humans and their ability to digest it.

    “The major components making up carbohydrates in plant-based milks are fiber and sugar. Dairy milks have no fiber, so all of the carbohydrates come from sugars. The key takeaway here is that almost 100 percent of the sugar in plant-based beverages are added sugars,” says Wright.

    “The recent FDA decision to add to the nutrition facts panel makes a distinction between natural sugars (like the lactose in milk) and added sugars (like the cane sugar added to sweetened plant-based milks). Milk sugar (lactose) provides a nutritional benefit to humans that cane sugar does not,” says Wright.

    Wright explains that most of the plant-based milk options — oat, almond, rice, coconut, hemp, cashew, hazelnut, soy, pea, flaxseed, and sesame — have similar nutrition profiles. “Coconut can have more fat than others, soy has more protein than the rest, sodium content is very consistent among all, oat and hazelnut can have more sugars, oat can have more calories than some.”

    “When you look at the list of sources, it’s important to remember that there are many potential allergens represented, including tree nuts, soy and sesame,” says Wright. “Many consumers leave dairy milk because of lactose intolerance, but may find that they are sensitive to the proteins in plant-based products as well. Reading and understanding labels is important for that reason.”

    About Wright

    Melissa Wright is director of the Food Producer Technical Assistant Network at Virginia Tech, which supports the food entrepreneur by assisting with starting a food business, nutrition label content, food safety analysis, and pertinent food regulations. The program’s goal is to help Virginia’s food-processing industry produce high-quality, safe, and innovative food products. As part of the Virginia Cooperative Extension network in the Department of Food Science and Technology under the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the program provides affordable and valuable assistance to help food entrepreneurs and businesses bring their products to market of food products produced in Virginia and beyond.

    Interview

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    Virginia Tech

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  • TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO AVAILABLE: Newswise Live Event: Do No-Calorie Sweeteners Affect Health?

    TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO AVAILABLE: Newswise Live Event: Do No-Calorie Sweeteners Affect Health?

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    What: Virtual Press Briefing on New Study of Low- and No-Calorie Sweeteners and Glycemic Response.

    When: Tuesday, February 21 2022 at 1:00 PM EST

    Who: Dr. Tauseef Khan, Research Associate in Epidemiology at the University of Toronto

    Details:

    Public health organizations that are working to reduce intake levels of sugars have suggested that sweetness in the diet be reduced (including from both sugars and low-calorie sweeteners), hypothesizing that consumption of sweet-tasting foods leads to a desire for more sweets. 

    This Newswise Live Event will discuss the effects of dietary sweeteners and overall diet quality on metabolic and endocrine health.

    Dr. Khan from the University of Toronto will participate in the expert panel and discuss the different aspects of these effects, with questions prepared by Newswise editors and submissions from media attendees.

    TRANSCRIPT

    Thom: Okay, welcome to today’s Newswise live event. We’re here to talk about no-calorie sweeteners and their effect on health. We have with us today, Dr. Tauseef Khan. He’s a research associate in epidemiology at the University of Toronto. And he’s also affiliated with IAFNS. 

    We’ll get started with Dr. Khan and please Dr. Khan, if you would, tell us a little bit about the study that you’re working on and the results here relating to these no-calorie sweeteners. And how is this different from other papers and studies about these sorts of topics? 

    Dr. Khan: So, as we know that sugars have emerged as a dominant nutrient of concern and the call for its reduction is presented by all health agencies and nutrition organizations, and dietary guidelines. And the focus has been – so one thing that can replace those excess calories or excess sugars is low-calorie sweeteners. However, low-calorie sweeteners have been –  in the media, there has been a certain amount of information given which might hint at harm. So that attention needs to be addressed. Is there harm with the low-calorie sweeteners? And some proposed mechanisms are that they affect sweet taste receptors, which impair your glucose response, and insulin response, or if you eat them with carbohydrates, then there is another acute response leading to glucose intolerance. So, we wanted to answer these concerns actually. 

    First of all, many of these papers or studies did not consider that these low-calorie sweeteners are distinct compounds. So, an effect of one was attributed to all others. Plus, also there are methodological design issues with many of these studies. So how they are taken, what are they taken with, and what are they compared to? So, we want to address that question. 

    So, we undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis to compare non-nutritional sweetened beverages to water and also to caloric sweeteners. 

    So, recent evidence shows that low-calorie sweeteners can replace those calories. However, the question is there is some concern regarding low-calorie sweeteners – Or I would call them non-nutritive sweeteners over here because that’s the name that we have used, the term we have used in the paper. 

    So, eight had been approved by the FDA and the attention has been, as I described, that these non-nutritive sweeteners may affect sweet taste receptors or glucose intolerance, or they might lead to glucose intolerance and then the results are usually given. So, one study is done and it’s attributed to all others. 

    So, we want to address those concerns. 

    So, what we did was- we did a systematic review and network meta-analysis. So, it’s a kind of a review of all acute studies, all studies which looked at the intake of non-nutritive sweeteners in the beverage form in which the non-nutritive sweetener was either single or blend, compared them to water and sugary beverages. And the outcomes we looked at were glucose, insulin, and all other endocrine responses that are related to sweet taste or weight gain or appetite. 

    We looked at three different kinds of studies and one was uncoupling intervention. So where non-nutritive sweetened beverages are consumed without any calories. So, you consume them in water compared to a sugary beverage or compared to water. So, they’re not consumed with any calories. 

    Then the second one was coupling interventions with non-nutritive sweetened beverages consumed with calories. And that can answer the specific question that we want to ask. 

    And another one was the delayed coupling where intervention with non-nutritive sweetened beverages is taken first and within 15 minutes, or there’s a delay of up to 15 minutes and then a meal is taken afterwards. So this answers the question – so if non-nutritive – do they affect these various responses or outcomes of these endocrine hormonal factors and can they then affect your meal response afterwards? This is a result which is a network meta-analysis. So, the advantage of – I’ll just explain what it is. 

    So, these are individual – so this is a big network plot where we have compared the individual sweeteners are here on the axis that is coming down and their individual non-nutritive sweeteners, then blends are here, then water, and these are caloric sweeteners which mean either glucose, sucrose or fructose. 

    So, what’s happening is every bar shows you a comparison. So, aspartame over here is compared to glucose or sucralose is compared to ASK and aspartame or saccharin is compared to over here to water. So, network meta-analysis allows us to compare each non-nutritive sweetener to another. So, every comparison can be compared to another, even if in the original studies they haven’t been compared with each other. And what we see is – anything that is bold is significant effect or anything that is blue is in a significant effect that is non-trivial. So, meaning that they are significant and that response actually needs attention. So, what we see is between the individual non-nutritive sweeteners and water, there’s no difference. They’re actually acting similarly. There is slight deviations here but those are non-trivial or unimportant. However, we see a large difference between the sweeteners and the non-nutritive sweeteners and caloric sweeteners. What it shows is compared to caloric sweeteners and non-nutritive sweeteners are acting similar to water and only caloric sweeteners are increasing glucose response. And this was in 14 trials. And if we see a coupling intervention where non-nutritive sweetener was given with calories, there is no difference between the control arm and the non-nutritive sweetener arm. And this is just one for glucose but we have this for all outcomes. I’m just showing you for glucose but we have all these outcomes, more than 11 outcomes that we have compared. 

    Delayed coupling where the non-nutritive sweetener is given slightly before the calories and calories are taken afterwards. We see no difference between all these non-nutritive sweeteners and sweetener blends and water. So, they’re very similar to water. They’re inert. They have no effect on the subsequent glucose response at all with meals.

     So, what do we find? 

    So, we found that non-nutritive sweetener beverages had no effect on acute glucose, insulin or other endocrine response markers like GLP-1, GIP, PYY, ghrelin, or glucose. These are all appetite or food-related endocrine factors or hormonal factors. 

    Non-nutritive sweeteners were similar to water. The findings are similar to previous reviews looking at this topic, ghrelin, Nicole and Tucker. So, these studies looked at either glucose or insulin but we have looked at all the other outcomes too. The results are similar to recently published systematic reviews in which rigorous methods were used. These were from our group also last year, Lee 2022, which was cohort studies and Maglin 2022, which was RCTs. And we show a similar difference of caloric versus non-nutritive sweeteners. 

    Non-nutritive sweeteners will be similar to water. 

    Our results differ from select narrative reviews, in vitro studies and human studies as they failed to consider key methodological and design issues, which I have described earlier like – a pattern of intake. So, these are three patterns we are looking at, plus the type of non-nutritive sweeteners and the comparator. Are you comparing it to another non-nutritive sweetener? Are you comparing it to blend? Are you comparing it to glucose? Are you comparing it to sucrose? So, all this actually matters. 

    This paper actually answers these two very important questions that are raised for acute studies, especially acute responses. One is that there’s uncoupling a sweet taste from caloric content because of non-nutritive sweeteners that disrupt metabolic consequences of sweet taste – through hormonal changes. 

    So, what it says is, that when you take non-nutritive sweeteners there are no calories involved. The body actually acts differently, and in that uncoupling, then the body then has to have a different response and it actually eats – there’s a different glucose or hormonal response because of that sweet taste disruption. However, when we looked at non-nutritive sweeteners uncoupled from calories, they did not elicit any different response. It was similar to water and I haven’t shown this but we also had a subset of people with type two diabetes and they showed the same result. 

    So, this actually answers this sweet and coupling hypothesis. 

    Another hypothesis that is presented in the literature is the non-nutritive sweeteners might alter metabolism when consumed along with carbohydrates. So, on their own they are fine but if you eat them with carbohydrates they have a different response and that is why they might be harmful. However, when we looked at that question – when we looked at the coupled and the delayed coupling studies, delayed coupling was a preload and non-nutritive sweeteners had taken preload. They did not produce any alteration in acute glucose or other metabolic responses and the effect was similar to water. 

    So, we answered these two very important questions that are being raised in literature. 

    In conclusion, that is my final slide, no differences in acute metabolic and endocrine responses were shown. These metabolic responses were glucose. These are the ones that regulate glucose of food intake. When we compared non-nutritious sweeteners, singles or blends with water – across three patterns of intake. Our study actually supports the use of non-nutritious sweetened beverages and an alternative replacement strategy for sugar-sweetened beverages similar to water. 

    That ends my presentation and thank you, and I’m open to questions now. 

    Thom: We’ve got a couple of questions from Marlene at Medscape. You addressed some of them already a little bit, but just to recap, if you could, in a few words. Even these sweeteners, these low-calorie sweeteners and things like soft drinks, your study is showing that they do not increase appetite or cause weight gain, and that’s one of Marlene’s questions from Medscape. 

    Dr. Khan: Yeah. We can talk about appetite and weight gain related to many of these hormonal factors that we study. These are acute trials, so they’re not looking at your weight gain three months down the line or your appetite changes over a long term. We’ll be looking at acute responses within two hours. Does it affect GLP, GIP, which affect appetite? Your glucose-insulin response might affect how your calories are stored as fat or not or if they are burned up. When we look at those short-term studies, there is no effect of the non-calorie sweeteners. The results are limited to short-term responses. However, these short-term responses can be considered to inform a long-term effect also, because if anything is happening long-term, it should then show something in the short-term also. 

    Thom: In light of that, another question from Marlene, that’s a good follow-up to that is, what should then doctors advise patients who want to follow a healthy way of eating and lose weight? The suggestion of substituting these kinds of sweeteners versus others – and as you said, looking at the more long-term patterns versus these acute ones, what would you say in response to that question? 

    Dr. Khan: So Long-term cohort studies – there is some literature published which shows that in the long term when you take low-calorie sweeteners or sweetened beverages, there is an increased risk of weight gain, diabetes, or mortality. However, those studies suffer from major methodological issues, and we addressed them in another paper we published recently in Diabetes Care. What those studies do is a lot of people when they’re taking excess calories, so they’re already at high risk of disease. As soon as either the doctor tells them or consciously, they decide to change and then switch to low-calorie sweeteners. When the study is done, actually they are recorded as taking low-calorie sweeteners, but it actually is that risk – so those who switch to low-calorie sweeteners are actually the ones who are at higher risk of disease already because of the excess intake over a lifetime of intake previously, like over decades. That is something, a phenomenon called reverse causality. 

    The high risk itself makes them switch to low-calorie sweeteners. When we look at those studies, we see that effect. 

    When you actually control for that, and we have done that in the previous paper in Diabetes Care where we looked at people who actually switched from sugar-sweetened beverages to low-calorie sweeteners. Actual switching and adjusting for their weight, and second, those who actually increase their intake of low-calorie sweeteners. In both situations, we found that low-calorie sweeteners actually reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes and mortality, and also was associated with a reduction in weight. Both in the long-term and the acute term, if rigorous methods are used and properly controlled methods are used, then low-calorie sweeteners show that they can be a viable replacement for excess calories.

    Thom:  Another question from Kristy Adams relating to oral health and these non-nutritive sweeteners. She references that the World Health Organization has mentioned that dental caries is the single most common health condition globally. Do these low and non-nutritive sweeteners play a role in reducing sugar consumption to support oral health around the world? 

    Dr. Khan: Thank you for this question. It’s very interesting. The WHO sugar guidelines for adults and children are actually based on oral health. Excess sugars or sugars that you take actually affect your oral health. So a reduction in sugar intake is recommended because of its benefits to oral health, and oral health then has association with chronic disease also. 

    If anything, that can reduce the consistent intake of sugary substances will be beneficial for oral health. So, this is not my area of research, I haven’t seen literature on how low-calorie sweeteners benefit oral health. However, if they are associated with the reduction in replacing those sugar intake, it most likely will affect or benefit oral health also. 

    Thom: What, if any, gaps are there still in this research that you’d like further studies to address? 

    Dr. Khan: Yeah, there are still some gaps. In acute studies, we had very few studies for blends. The majority of trials looked at single non-nutritive sweeteners. However, in industry, the majority of foods have blends in them. 

    More studies or more trials need to be done on blends. That’s one issue. 

    Then there has to be consistency between what we see in human studies and what is seen in animal studies. In animal studies, they give very high dosages, and then they show some effect. However, with humans, the amount is so small, it doesn’t. More studies need to be done regarding those specific non-nutritive sweeteners which have shown some effect in animal studies. But in our study, we show that they are also inert in their effect on humans. 

    Thom: If we don’t have any others coming in the chat, I wanted to ask Dr. Khan about this sweet uncoupling that you referred to. Could you just summarize that for us as best you can, this separation between the taste of sweetness versus actual calories, and help us make a little bit of sense of that for maybe a takeaway here? 

    Dr. Khan: Sweet uncoupling hypothesis is just a hypothesis. It’s not been proven yet. This was presented a few years ago in the literature which says that when there’s uncoupling of sweet taste from calories. When you eat sweet food or caloric sugars, it has sweetness. 

    However, non-nutritive sweeteners are sweet, but they have no calories. 

    The hypothesis was when there is an uncoupling or separation between that, our body becomes confused and it disrupts the metabolic consequences of sweet taste. When you eat non-nutritive sweeteners, you feel the sweetness, but your gut then is expecting calories, but those calories do not arrive. It then starts responding through some acute hormonal changes. These factors GLP, GIP1, or glucose or insulin response actually then is disrupted. That is the hypothesis. 

    Thom: Your feeling is that this study is evidence to disprove that hypothesis? 

    Dr. Khan: Yes. Our study is uniquely placed to answer that question because we looked at studies where non-nutritive sweeteners were separated from calories. It did not elicit any acute hormonal response and they were very similar to water. It was both in healthy people and also in people with type 2 diabetes. 

    I believe our study actually answers that very well. 

    Thom: Fascinating. Thank you so much, Dr. Khan. I think that’s all the questions we have for today. With that, I will say thank you to Steve Gibb from the IAFNS for helping to arrange this and thank you, Dr. Tauseef Khan from the University of Toronto. Really fascinating stuff and good luck with your next studies. Thanks very much. 

    Dr. Khan: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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  • Human contact makes for happier and healthier dairy calves

    Human contact makes for happier and healthier dairy calves

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    Newswise — Philadelphia, February 20, 2023 – Calves’ well-being, including their physical and emotional health, is always top of mind for those in the dairy industry, particularly during the weaning stage. In a recent study appearing in JDS Communications®, published by Elsevier, researchers from the University of Florida demonstrated that socialization with other calves and humans—even for as little as five minutes—can improve overall calf well-being.

    Lead investigator Emily K. Miller-Cushon, PhD, of the University of Florida Department of Animal Sciences, Gainesville, FL, USA, explained that assessing how a calf is feeling is usually done by observing behaviors, especially abnormal behaviors which can include “sucking or chewing on their housing pens or bedding, on their pen-mates or human handlers—all of which are common in the period after calves are fed.” These kinds of behaviors are generally considered signs of frustration and can affect calves’ health.

    “Calves are active and seek stimulation following milk-feeding, so providing more things to do, like brushing, may calm calves, reducing sucking behaviors after feeding and increasing rest,” said Miller-Cushon.

    Because studies have already shown that calves seek out human contact, the researchers set out to understand how the human-animal relationship might impact these sucking behaviors. To find an answer, the team randomly assigned 28 Holstein heifer calves to either individual or paired housing from birth to seven weeks old and standardized their contact with humans over this period to include feeding and health exams. The calves began weaning at six weeks old; over a four-day study period during weaning, the researchers introduced additional human contact and continuously video-recorded its effects on behavior. During this window, each calf received two days of their normal amount of human contact and two experimental days, in which they received an extra five minutes of neck scratches with their familiar human handlers. 

    Why neck scratches? “We know from previous research that calves seem to enjoy tactile contact including brushing from humans. This kind of contact can reduce their heart rates, and calves lean into the scratches and stretch out their necks for more,” explained Miller-Cushon. “We also see that calves suck on the pen less when they have a stationary brush that they can rub against.”

    After analyzing the video recordings, the study team concluded that human contact does impact calf behavior and helps to promote calm and well-being. Those five minutes spent with humans reduced the duration of calves’ sucking behaviors and increased their amount of rest after meals. This decrease in sucking behavior was especially pronounced in the calves housed alone compared with those that had a pen-mate—indicating the importance of socialization not just with humans but also with other calves.

    Miller-Cushon was careful to note that the human contact in the study did not eliminate sucking behaviors entirely, however: “Our findings showed benefits of human contact, but the results also suggest that our work is not done in finding the most beneficial and natural methods of feeding and housing our dairy calves.”

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  • IAFNS Looks Ahead at 2nd Anniversary with Focus on Food, Nutrition, Transparency

    IAFNS Looks Ahead at 2nd Anniversary with Focus on Food, Nutrition, Transparency

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    Newswise — Washington D.C. – The Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS) launched two years ago and saw both growth in new members and science productivity increase. In 2022 IAFNS supported 23 peer-reviewed scientific papers and hosted over 150 speakers at 37 events. IAFNS webinars reached over 11,000 nutritionists and food safety professionals in government, industry, academia and other stakeholder groups.

    In 2022 IAFNS expanded public and private sector membership, embraced the next generation of scientists with Summer Research Opportunity Fellowships, and was cited in over 270 media outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle, Yahoo!, The PBS News Hour and Forbes. IAFNS Executive Director Dr. Wendelyn Jones published 10 Op-Eds on topics as diverse as leadership and core values, the Bioeconomy, data access, climate and corn pathogens, and heavy metals. This media coverage and thought leadership demonstrates IAFNS ongoing relevance and agility in the always dynamic food and beverage ecosystem.

    IAFNS created new ways to meet future opportunities by hosting its second Science Innovation Showcase highlighting plant-based proteins, the FDA’s new “healthy” food definition and a session on Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) criteria. It featured timely presentations from start-up leaders and scientific experts and included dialogue sessions on Canadian front of pack labels and lively input from NGO stakeholder groups.

    In 2022 IAFNS leaders doubled down on their core values of scientific integrity centered on transparency, collaboration and public benefit. The organization’s leadership in these areas has been recognized by securing a Platinum Seal of Transparency from GuideStar at Candid – a recognition achieved by fewer than 1 percent of nonprofits. IAFNS-supported scientists also adhere to the TOP guidelines as a signatory to the Center for Open Science – demonstrating our active shepherding of this commitment.

    According to IAFNS’ Dr. Wendelyn Jones, “This has been another banner year for actionable science that advances public health as evidenced by our output and recognition by external stakeholders. We’re pleased to report that 2022 brought a 20% increase in new supporting members to IAFNS as we continue to build our science-driven programs to support evidence-based decision-making by all sectors.”

    Mark your calendars as we will be hosting the IAFNS Annual Summer Science Symposium on June 13 and 14 in Washington, D.C.  The event is proving to be a unique gathering of scientific and regulatory experts where connections are made and collaborations are formed to drive positive change. More details to come here.

    For more on how you can engage with IAFNS, follow us on LinkedIn, sign-up for our Science Briefs, and visit our events page to learn about upcoming nutrition and food safety presentations. Learn more about joining IAFNS here.

    The Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS) is committed to leading positive change across the food and beverage ecosystem. IAFNS is a 501(c)(3) science-focused nonprofit uniquely positioned to mobilize government, industry and academia to drive, fund and lead actionable research. iafns.org

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  • New discovery to bulk up gluten-free fibre supplement

    New discovery to bulk up gluten-free fibre supplement

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    Newswise — Scientists have for the first time constructed the reference genome for the source of the popular fibre supplement, psyllium husk, which could boost supplies of the versatile plant-derived product.

    University of Adelaide experts conducted research on psyllium, also known as Plantago ovata.

    “We extracted and sequenced the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from leaf tissue to construct the chromosome-level reference genome for Plantago ovata and used ribonucleic acid (RNA) from other parts of the plant to predict the function of its genes,” said the University of Adelaide’s Professor Rachel Burton, a researcher from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.

    “This is a significant development because it will pave the way for improvements to the quality and quantity of psyllium crops.”

    DNA is the molecule that contains genetic information needed for the development and functioning of an organism while RNA acts as a messenger, carrying instructions from DNA to build proteins.

    This finding has been published in the journal Scientific Reports and is the result of a decade-long investigation by University of Adelaide researchers into the genetic makeup of the plant.

    Psyllium has been used for food and medicinal purposes for thousands of years.

    The seeds of the plant are milled to produce a soluble fibre used in pharmaceuticals and supplements to improve gut health and control blood cholesterol.

    Psyllium is also a common ingredient in gluten-free food. The seeds and their husks are naturally gluten-free and when mixed with water, produce a sticky substance that replicates some of the functions of gluten in bread.

    “This is a significant development because it will pave the way for improvements to the quality and quantity of psyllium crops.”The University of Adelaide’s Professor Rachel Burton, a researcher from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.

    This quality makes psyllium an essential ingredient in gluten-free bread and it can be used in a whole range of other baked goods. With the market size of gluten-free foods expected to reach USD$8.3 billion in 2025, demand for psyllium is predicted to increase.

    The plant is highly susceptible to changes in environmental conditions and diseases which not only affects the yield, but also the price and quality of this valuable commodity.

    “To date, efforts to improve the quality and quantity of psyllium husk have been hampered by the lack of a reference genome,” said the University of Adelaide’s Dr James Cowley, who is also from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine and co-authored this study.

    “The development of a high-quality Plantago ovata reference genome will not only help to boost breeding programs but will also support lab-based experiments to better understand how carbohydrates in plants are constructed so we can tailor them for food and pharmaceutical uses.”

    First author Dr Lina Herliana conducted this research while pursuing her PhD at the University of Adelaide’s Waite Campus.

    “We predict the availability of this reference genome will lead to the development of new cultivars with higher yields that are more adaptable to environmental conditions. This will stabilise the production of psyllium products and seed or husk prices,” said Dr Herliana.

    The long-term project to understand the fundamental biology of psyllium was supported by an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence and Linkage Project.

    It is expected that this discovery will accelerate further research into genetic improvement and breeding of psyllium.

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    University of Adelaide

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  • Evolution of wheat spikes since the Neolithic revolution

    Evolution of wheat spikes since the Neolithic revolution

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    Newswise — Around 12,000 years ago, the Neolithic revolution radically changed the economy, diet and structure of the first human societies in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East. With the beginning of the cultivation of cereals —such as wheat and barley— and the domestication of animals, the first cities emerged in a new social context marked by a productive economy. Now, a study published in the journal Trends in Plant Science and co-led by the University of Barcelona, the Agrotecnio centre and the University of Lleida, analyses the evolution of wheat spikes since its cultivation began by the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia —the cradle of agriculture in the world— between the Tigris and the Euphrates.

    The authors of the study are Rut Sánchez-Bragado and Josep Lluís Araus-Ortega, from the UB Faculty of Biology and Agrotecnio-UdL; Gustavo A. Slafer, ICREA researcher at the UdL School of Agrifood and Forestry Science and Engineering, and Gemma Molero, from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, currently a researcher at KWS Seeds Inc.

    A cereal that changed human history

    The cultivation of wheat —a grass that became basic food— represented a turning point in the progress of human civilisation. Today it is the world’s most important crop in terms of food security, but EU data warn that the impact of climate change could significantly increase its price and modify its production process in certain areas of the world.

    Throughout the domestication process of wheat, the plant phenotype has undergone both rapid (within a few hundred years) and slow (thousands of years) changes, such as the weakening of the rachis, the increase in seed size, and the reduction or disappearance of the awns. In particular, awned and awnless wheat varieties are found all over the world, although the latter tend to be abundant in regions with arid climates, especially during the final stages of cultivation in late spring, a condition typical of Mediterranean environments.

    “It is important to conduct studies that show which wheat varieties are best adapted to different environmental growing conditions, especially in a context of climate change. Studying the past retrospectively can give us an idea of the evolution of wheat cultivation over the millennia since agriculture appeared in ancient Mesopotamia”, says Rut Sánchez-Bragado, first author of the study, who got a PhD at the UB.

    “Awns are organs of the spike that have traditionally been associated with the plant’s adaptations to drought conditions”, says Josep Lluís Araus, professor at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the Faculty of Biology.

    “However, archaeological and historical records show that the wheat spike has existed predominantly with awns for more than ten millennia after the domestication of wheat. It is not until the last millennium that evidence shows in many cases the absence of awns, indicating a selection by farmers —probably in an undirected way— against this organ”, stresses Araus, one of the most cited authors in the world according to Clarivate Analytics’ Highly Cited Researchers (2022).

    “The role of wheat awns in their performance remains controversial despite decades of studies”, says researcher Gustavo A. Slafer, corresponding author of the study.

    Spike awns: beneficial for the plant?

    Is the presence of awns on the spike beneficial for the plant and the crops? Although there is no scientific consensus, “everything suggests that in conditions where the plant does not suffer from water stress, the extra photosynthetic capacity of the awns does not compensate for other potential negative effects (reduced susceptibility to fungal diseases, limitation in the total number of large ones that an ear supports, etc.)”, says Araus.

    “However, in wetter climates the awns accumulate moisture and can promote the spread of diseases”, says Rut Sánchez-Bragado. “So, as the world’s population is continuously growing, it is necessary to investigate the role of the awned spikes in the changing conditions of our climate in order to meet the world’s demand for a primary food commodity such as wheat”.

    In arid conditions, the spikes —including the awns— “have better physiological characteristics than the leaves. In addition, the awns allow the light captured by the crop to be more diffused, which facilitates a better distribution of light energy and allows the crop to photosynthesise more. Therefore, in arid conditions, the awns can still be beneficial for the crop, or at most, neutral”, concludes Professor Josep Lluís Araus.

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  • Farming more seaweed to be food, feed and fuel

    Farming more seaweed to be food, feed and fuel

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    Newswise — A University of Queensland-led study has shown that expanding global seaweed farming could go a long way to addressing the planet’s food security, biodiversity loss and climate change challenges.

    PhD Candidate Scott Spillias, from UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Science, said seaweed offered a sustainable alternative to land-based agricultural expansion to meet the world’s growing need for food and materials.

    “Seaweed has great commercial and environmental potential as a nutritious food and a building block for commercial products including animal feed, plastics, fibres, diesel and ethanol,” Mr Spillias said.

    “Our study found that expanding seaweed farming could help reduce demand for terrestrial crops and reduce global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by up to 2.6 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year.”

    Researchers mapped the potential of farming more of the 34 commercially important seaweed species using the Global Biosphere Management Model.

    They estimated the environmental benefits of a range of scenarios based on land-use changes, GHG emissions, water and fertiliser use, and projected changes in species presence by 2050.

    “In one scenario where we substituted 10 per cent of human diets globally with seaweed products, the development of 110 million hectares of land for farming could be prevented,” Mr Spillias said.

    “We also identified millions of available hectares of ocean within global exclusive economic zones* (EEZs), where farming could be developed.

    “The largest share of suitable ocean was in the Indonesian EEZ, where up to 114 million hectares is estimated to be suitable for seaweed farming.

    “The Australian EEZ also shows great potential and species diversity, with at least 22 commercially viable species and an estimated 75 million hectares of ocean being suitable.”

    Mr Spillias said many native species of seaweed in Australian waters had not yet been studied from a commercial production perspective.

    “The way I like to look at this is to think about ancestral versions of everyday crops – like corn and wheat – which were uninspiring, weedy things,” he said.

    “Through thousands of years of breeding we have developed the staple crops that underpin modern societies and seaweed could very well hold similar potential in the future.”

    UQ study collaborator Professor Eve McDonald-Madden said the seaweed solution would have to be carried out with care, to avoid displacing problems from the land to the ocean.

    “Our study points out what could be done to address some of the mounting problems of global sustainability facing us, but it can’t be implemented without exercising extreme caution,” she said.

    This research was published in Nature Sustainability.

    UQ acknowledges the collaborative efforts of researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, CSIRO and the University of Tasmania.

    *An area of the sea in which a sovereign state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind.

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  • Attributing the rising costs of groceries to “price gouging” is not accurate

    Attributing the rising costs of groceries to “price gouging” is not accurate

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    Fact Check By:
    Craig Jones, Newswise

    Truthfulness: Mostly False

    Claim:

    Grocery stores need to be brought to heel over food prices. This isn’t ‘inflation’ because it isn’t caused by monetary oversupply. It’s just price gouging and we know that because we can literally see that they’re all reporting surplus profits.

    Claim Publisher and Date: Twitter user emmy rākete among others on 2023-01-21

    On social media, complaints regarding the rising costs of groceries are trending. It’s no surprise after all, the price of groceries has gone up around 13% compared to last year. According to the data from the Labor Department, the price of fruits and vegetables increased by 10.4 percent annually, while milk rose 15.2 percent and eggs soared 30.5 percent. Like other sectors of the economy, food prices are susceptible to supply chain complications and geopolitical unrest including the war in Ukraine. But some people have expressed their disdain for grocery store companies, accusing them of “price gouging” to increase their profits, which have been reaching exorbitant heights (corporate profits are at their highest levels in nearly 50 years, according to CBS MoneyWatch).

    For example, this tweet shared by thousands blames the rising prices of groceries on retailers engaged in price gouging: “Grocery stores need to be brought to heel over food prices. This isn’t ‘inflation’ because it isn’t caused by monetary oversupply. It’s just price gouging and we know that because we can literally see that they’re all reporting surplus profits.” 

    Is putting the blame on grocery store managers for your rising costs of orange juice accurate? It’s not quite that simple. The claim of “price gouging” at the grocery store is misleading because of the complex nature of the grocery business. Professor Lisa Jack, School of Accounting, Economics and Finance and lead of the Food Cultures in Transition (FoodCiTi) research group at the University of Portsmouth explains…

    Supermarket profits are complex and care should be taken with attributing them to any one cause. There are three main factors:

    1. Commercial income, also known as suppliers payments or back margin, contributes heavily to supermarket profits. These payments and support from suppliers to the supermarket include volume discounts and marketing fees. These can represent as much as 7% of a supermarket’s income: bottom line profits can average around 1-2% of income. Primary producers are seeing rapidly increasing costs for all inputs and having been squeezed to breaking point over the last 20 years, have no choice but to increase the prices of their output. Similarly for processors, packagers, distributors and every other business supplying supermarkets. The supermarkets themselves claim to be fighting on behalf of consumers to be keeping prices down and there is evidence that they are refusing price increase requests, which implies that commercial income is still being maintained. 
    1. In the last few years, supermarkets have been increasing profits by cutting overhead costs at head offices and in support services. Counterintuitively, the only economy of scale they have is bargaining power – see above. All their activities, including large stores, increase the overhead costs which can be as much as 75% of their spend. A significant amount of recent ‘soaring profits’ come from job losses, which are not sustainable in the long run. 
    1. Since their emergence in the 1920s, the business model for supermarkets has been to sell basics at little or no profit relying on high volumes to break even. Profits come from enticing customers to buy at least one impulse, premium item of food and non-grocery items. 8 of the 10 best sellers in supermarkets are the cheaper (but still higher profit margin) alcohol, confectionery and snacks. Since the pandemic and the cost of living crisis hit, more of us are exchanging going out for buying in ready-meals, alcohol and other treats, and buying more of our non-grocery items from supermarkets. These are where the profits come from, and they are being taken away from other sectors. Unsurprisingly, the food businesses that have the highest margins are those that produce brands of alcohol, confectionery etc – ‘Big Food’.

    Note to Journalists/Editors: The expert quotes are free to use in your relevant articles on this topic. Please attribute them to their proper sources.

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    Newswise

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  • Reduced krill lead to fewer pregnancies in humpback whales

    Reduced krill lead to fewer pregnancies in humpback whales

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    New collaborative research led by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows reduced krill supplies lead to fewer pregnancies in humpback whales—a finding that could have major implications for industrial krill fishing.

    The study, published January 15 in Global Change Biology, is based on eight years of data on humpback whale pregnancies (2013 to 2020) in waters along the Western Antarctic Peninsula, where krill fishing is concentrated.

    Krill availability in the year before a humpback pregnancy is crucial because females need to increase their energy stores to support the upcoming pregnancy. In 2017, after a year in which krill were abundant, 86% of the humpback females sampled were pregnant. But in 2020, following a year in which krill were less plentiful, only 29% of humpback females were pregnant.

    Lead author Logan Pallin, a postdoctoral researcher in the Ocean Sciences Department at UC Santa Cruz, said the study demonstrates for the first time the link between population growth and krill availability in Antarctic whales.

    “This is significant because until now, it was thought that krill were essentially an unlimited food source for whales in the Antarctic,” said Pallin, who earned his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC while working on this study. “Continued warming and increased fishing along the Western Antarctic Peninsula, which continue to reduce krill stocks, will likely impact this humpback whale population and other krill predators in the region.”

    “This information is critical as we can now be proactive about managing how, when, and how much krill is taken from the Antarctic Peninsula,” he added. “In years of poor krill recruitment, we should not compound this by removing krill from critical foraging areas for baleen whales.”

    Coauthor Ari Friedlaender, professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz, said the Western Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing some of the fastest climatic warming of any region on the planet. Winter air temperatures have risen significantly since the 1950s, and the annual sea ice extent is, on average, 80 days shorter than four decades ago.

    “Krill supplies vary depending on the amount of sea ice because juvenile krill feed on algae growing on sea ice and also rely on the ice for shelter,” Friedlaender said. “In years with less sea ice in the winter, fewer juvenile krill survive to the following year. The impacts of climate change and likely the krill fishery are contributing to a decrease in humpback whale reproductive rates in years with less krill available for whales.”

    Coauthor Chris Johnson, the global lead of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Protecting Whales & Dolphins Initiative, said this research shows that highly precautionary management measures are needed to protect all Antarctic marine life that depends on krill for its survival, including blue, fin, humpback, minke, and southern right whales, as well as other krill predators such as penguins, seabirds, seals, and fish.

    “Krill are not an inexhaustible resource, and there is a growing overlap between industrial krill fishing and whales feeding at the same time,” Johnson said. “Humpback whales feed in the Antarctic for a handful of months a year to fuel their annual energetic needs for migration that spans thousands of kilometers. We need to tread carefully and protect this unique part of the world, which will benefit whales across their entire range.”

    Pallin and Friedlaender collaborated on this research with coauthors from multiple national and international universities, NGOs, non-profits, and government agencies. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, and Marine Mammal Commission.

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  • O nutricionista da Mayo Clinic responde: seria um smoothie de frutas uma boa opção para substituir uma refeição?

    O nutricionista da Mayo Clinic responde: seria um smoothie de frutas uma boa opção para substituir uma refeição?

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    Newswise — PHOENIX—Um smoothie comum é uma bebida feita com uma mistura de frutas ou vegetais. Há muitas maneiras de preparar um. Embora eles forneçam vários benefícios à saúde, beber muitos smoothies pode afetar negativamente a sua saúde. Eles podem adicionar muitas calorias inesperadas à dieta, especialmente quando um smoothie é uma bebida que pode equivaler a uma refeição. Lorraine Fye, nutricionista da Mayo Clinic, dá algumas dicas sobre como consumir smoothies de frutas de uma forma inteligente. 

    Smoothies são bebidas deliciosas e fáceis de fazer. Mas, eles são bons para a sua saúde? 

    “Eu diria que essa é uma maneira muito fácil de consumir muitas frutas e vegetais benéficos para a sua saúde. Em um pequeno copo, você pode obter muitos nutrientes”, diz Fye. 

    Mas o excesso, mesmo de uma coisa boa, pode ser prejudicial. 

    “Um smoothie que pode ser prejudicial à saúde seria um que talvez tenha só frutas ou com muito suco de frutas, com a adição de muito açúcar e não muito equilibrado”, diz Fye. 

    Um smoothie pode ser delicioso e ainda ser saudável. Você só precisa incluir os ingredientes certos. 

    “O smoothie saudável: esse é o equilíbrio que estamos realmente procurando. O que você precisa é de bons carboidratos, boas proteínas e gorduras boas e saudáveis,” ela diz. 

    Depois de encontrar o equilíbrio e o sabor certos, esse smoothie pode ser uma coisa boa. 

    “É muito bom tomar um smoothie todos os dias. Ele pode substituir uma refeição de maneira conveniente, desde que você se certifique de que realmente está substituindo a refeição. A quantidade de calorias deve ser suficiente”, diz Fye. 

    Receitas de smoothies: 

    ### 

    Jornalistas: um vídeo com qualidade para transmissão (1:00) está disponível no final da publicação em inglês na Rede de Notícias da Mayo Clinic. Lembrem-se de incluir “Cortesia: Rede de Informações da Mayo Clinic.” 

    Sobre a Mayo Clinic  A Mayo Clinic é uma organização sem fins lucrativos comprometida com a inovação na prática clínica, educação e pesquisa, fornecendo compaixão, conhecimento e respostas para todos que precisam de cura. Visite a Rede de Notícias da Mayo Clinic para obter outras notícias da Mayo Clinic.  

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  • يستجيب اختصاصي التغذية في Mayo Clinic: هل عصير الفاكهة خيار بديل جيد للوجبات؟

    يستجيب اختصاصي التغذية في Mayo Clinic: هل عصير الفاكهة خيار بديل جيد للوجبات؟

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    الشراب المخفوق التقليدي (السموذي) هو عبارة عن مشروب مصنوع من خليط الفواكه أو الخضراوات، ويمكن تحضيره بعدة طرق مختلفة. على الرغم من فوائده الصحية العديدة، فإن الإفراط في تناول المشروبات المخفوقة (السموذي) بمعدلات كبيرة قد يؤثر سلبًا على صحتك. إذ إنه قد يضيف الكثير من السعرات الحرارية غير المتوقعة، لا سيما عند تناوله مع وجبات طعام. لورين فاي، اختصاصي النُّظم الغذائية لدى مايو كلينك، لديها بعض الطرق البسيطة للتعامل بذكاء مع شراب الفاكهة المخفوقة (السموذي).

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  • Walnuts the new super food for stressed university students

    Walnuts the new super food for stressed university students

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    Newswise — Stressed university students might want to add walnuts to their daily diet in the weeks leading up to their next exam.

    A new clinical trial of undergraduate students during their university studies has shown positive effects of walnut consumption on self-reported measures of mental health and biomarkers of general health.  

    The University of South Australia study, published in the journal Nutrients, also suggests that walnuts may counteract the effects of academic stress on the gut microbiota during periods of stress, especially in females.

    Lead researchers, PhD student Mauritz Herselman and Associate Professor Larisa Bobrovskaya, say the results add to the growing body of evidence linking walnuts with improved brain and gut health.

    “Students experience academic stress throughout their studies, which has a negative effect on their mental health, and they are particularly vulnerable during exam periods,” Herselman says.

    Eighty undergraduate students split into treatment and control groups were clinically assessed in three intervals, at the beginning of a 13-week university semester, during the examination period and two weeks after the examination period. Those in the treatment group were given walnuts to consume daily for 16 weeks over these three intervals.

    “We found that those who consumed about half a cup of walnuts every day showed improvements in self-reported mental health indicators.  Walnut consumers also showed improved metabolic biomarkers and overall sleep quality in the longer term.”

    Students in the control group reported increased stress and depression levels in the leadup to exams but those in the treatment group did not. The walnut consumers also reported a significant drop in feelings associated with depression between the first and final visits, compared to the controls.

    Previous research has shown that walnuts are full of omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, as well as melatonin (sleep inducing hormone), polyphenols, folate and vitamin E, all of which promote a healthy brain and gut.

    “The World Health Organization has recently stated that at least 75 per cent of mental health disorders affect people under the age of 24 years, making undergraduate students particularly vulnerable to mental health problems,” Herselman says.

    Assoc Prof Larisa Bobrovskaya says mental health disorders are common in university students and can adversely affect students’ academic performance and long-term physical health.

    “We have shown that consuming walnuts during stressful periods can improve mental health and general wellbeing in university students, as well as being a healthy and delicious snack and a versatile ingredient in many recipes, to fight some negative effects of academic stress,” Assoc Prof Bobrovskaya says.

    “Due to fewer numbers of males in the study, more research is needed to establish sex-dependent effects of walnuts and academic stress in university students. It’s also possible that a placebo effect might have come into play as this was not a blind study.”

    Notes for editors

    “The Effects of Walnuts and Academic Stress on Mental Health, General Well-Being and the Gut Microbiota in a Sample of University Students: A Randomised Clinical Trial” is published in Nutrients.

    It is co-authored by UniSA PhD student Mauritz Herselman, and colleagues from the Clinical and Health Sciences and Allied Health and Human Performance academic units at the University of South Australia.

    The study was co-funded by the California Walnut Commission.

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  • The Medical Minute: What’s making you sleepy on Thanksgiving?

    The Medical Minute: What’s making you sleepy on Thanksgiving?

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    Newswise — Call it the turkey’s revenge.

    Every year, millions of Americans enjoy their annual Thanksgiving feast, then sit back to watch a Detroit Lions NFL game or enjoy a lively political discussion with their families only to find they can’t keep their eyes open.

    It’s as though they’ve been … drugged.

    Popular conjecture has it that turkey meat contains a high concentration of a naturally occurring chemical called tryptophan that causes you to sleep through much of the time you’re supposed to spend being thankful. But Kent Vrana, Elliot S. Vesell professor and chair of pharmacology at Penn State College of Medicine, who has been studying the chemical his entire career, says you’re just as likely to get sleepy from eating a cheeseburger as a plate of dark or white bird meat.

    What is tryptophan?

    With tryptophan you’re more likely to wind up with big biceps than an urge to nap. Tryptophan is one of 20 amino acids, the chemicals the human body uses to make the proteins that are key to producing muscle. “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the tryptophan we take in is used to make the structures in our bodies,” Vrana said.

    Humans use a small amount of the tryptophan to make chemicals called neurotransmitters, which help the cells in their brain communicate with one another. Tryptophan is a precursor to making serotonin, the brain’s feel-good hormone whose activity is modulated by many anti-depressants. And then an even smaller portion of that serotonin becomes converted to melatonin, which is a natural sleep aid.

    And turkey is loaded with it. Right?

    “All meats contain tryptophan,” Vrana said. “It’s a myth that turkey contains more.”

    In fact, there isn’t any more tryptophan in your Thanksgiving turkey than there is in a roast of wild boar ― even with stuffing and cranberry sauce.

    The scientific misunderstanding that led to the idea seems to come from tryptophan’s serotonin-melatonin-producing properties. But the amounts of these chemicals produced are so small, they’re not going to knock you out. Still, over the decades the tryptophan turkey story has, like the dinner from which it derives, had legs. It’s a plot point in sitcoms and bandied about in dinner conversation. Even the pharmaceutical industry has on occasion bought in. Decades ago, drug makers started marketing super-high concentrated doses of tryptophan as a non-prescription pill to help people sleep. It’s also a component in some of the powders weightlifters use to build muscle.

    So why do I get so groggy after Thanksgiving dinner?

    “Euphemistically, it’s called post-prandial depression,” Vrana said. “I’m a beef guy. So if I eat a steak or a great big burger – especially if I have a couple beers with it – I’m going to get sleepy. But it has nothing to do with tryptophan.”

    An evolutionary component could be at play. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, when the question “What are you thankful for?” elicited answers like “this loin cloth” and “I wasn’t eaten by a saber-tooth tiger this year,” our ancestors hunted down their November meals. After eating, their bodies knew instinctually the time had come to rest and recuperate for the next hunt. And maybe take in a Lion’s game (which in those days were played by actual lions).

    “There’s going to be a shift in your blood flow toward the gut, because you’ve got a lot of work to do to digest all that stuff,” Vrana said. “Theoretically, you’re not under any stress. And so it shifts the neuronal signaling from the stress response.”

    Your heart rate drops. You feel calm while your body focuses on digesting and getting some much-needed rest.

    And if you’re lucky enough to recline in a warm room surrounded by people you love reflecting on happy times, what could be more soothing?

    Or maybe the Detroit Lions are just that bad.

    Related content:

    The Medical Minute is a weekly health news feature produced by Penn State Health. Articles feature the expertise of faculty, physicians and staff, and are designed to offer timely, relevant health information of interest to a broad audience.

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  • Science misinformation on GMOs reaches quarter of a billion people, study finds

    Science misinformation on GMOs reaches quarter of a billion people, study finds

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    Newswise — 17 NOVEMBER 2022, ITHACA, NEW YORK: Science misinformation about genetically modified crops and foods had a potential global readership of over a quarter of a billion people, according to a new study published by the Alliance for Science, which combats anti-science misinformation on topics like climate, vaccines and GMOs.

    The study assessed top English-language media from around the world, with stories published over a two-year period between January 2019 and January 2021. Articles were assessed for misinformation, defined as statements that disagreed with the scientific consensus on the safety of genetic engineering.

    Overall, 9% (47) of the 535 relevant articles containing ‘GMO’-related keywords contained misinformation. This false information was considered likely to have had a potential reach of 256 million people.

    The problem is particularly acute in Africa, where one-fifth of media coverage of genetically modified foods contained misinformation. The corresponding figures for North America and Europe were 5% and 7%, respectively.

    As well as regional tags, the articles were also subjected to sentiment analysis. While an overwhelming majority of articles were categorized as ‘neutral,’ the majority of misinformation was rated as ‘negative’ in tone. There were no articles containing misinformation with a positive tone towards GMOs.

    The biggest category of misinformation concerned human health. This category includes articles containing claims that GMOs cause cancer or other health impacts without refutation, because such claims contradict a worldwide scientific consensus that food from genetically engineered crops is as safe as food from non-genetically engineered crops. Misinformation on GMOs and human health also had the highest readership, achieving a potential reach of 139 million people.

    The study was conducted in partnership with Cision Media, using its NextGen database of global media. Sentiment analysis and categorization was performed manually, not by machine.

    The paper, which is published in the peer-reviewed journal GM Crops & Food, is titled “Misinformation in the media: global coverage of GMOs 2019-2021.” The lead author is Mark Lynas, climate and research lead at the Alliance for Science, which is based at the Boyce Thompson Institute in Ithaca, New York.

    Lynas has previously published work with the Alliance for Science quantifying the scientific consensus on climate change, and examining media misinformation both on COVID-19 and vaccines. This new paper is thought to be the first to quantify the extent of GMO-related misinformation in the world’s media based on a comprehensive dataset.

    On the issue of GMO misinformation, Lynas said: “Our results show that misinformation about GMOs is still a huge problem, and that hundreds of millions of people are being given false information that contradicts the scientific consensus on the safety of genetic engineering. Make no mistake: misinformation about GMOs can be as harmful to society as misinformation on vaccines or climate change. The media must do better, and stop publishing false claims on this subject spread by anti-science activists.”

    Dr Sheila Ochugboju, executive director the Alliance for Science, added: “What is most worrying is that the problem of misinformation on GMOs is particularly acute in Africa, where it is harming the livelihoods of smallholder farmers by preventing them from accessing new crop varieties that are resistant to pests and to drought caused by climate change.”

    She added: “It is vital that the benefits of scientific innovation are not denied to people in the Global South,” and vowed that the Alliance for Science will continue to combat misinformation on this subject and others via its Nairobi-based Global South Hub, and by working with partners including the Open Forum for Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB).

    About Boyce Thompson Institute:

    Opened in 1924, Boyce Thompson Institute is a premier life sciences research institution located in Ithaca, New York. BTI scientists conduct investigations into fundamental plant and life sciences research with the goals of increasing food security, improving environmental sustainability in agriculture, and making basic discoveries that will enhance human health. Throughout this work, BTI is committed to inspiring and educating students and to providing advanced training for the next generation of scientists. BTI is an independent nonprofit research institute that is also affiliated with Cornell University. For more information, please visit BTIscience.org.

    ###

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  • A win, win, win for dairy production in East Africa

    A win, win, win for dairy production in East Africa

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    Newswise — Adopting high yield dairy cattle breeds and improving feed would allow Tanzania to increase milk production, while reducing planet warming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and alleviating poverty, a new study reveals.

    Tanzania has the second largest dairy herd in East Africa with 28 million cows. However, its dairy sector is poorly developed with mainly small-scale farms stocked with low-yielding breeds, using poor quality feeds. This, along with other supply chain problems around handling and refrigeration, results in poor productivity and the need to import processed dairy products leading to a $23 million trade deficit.

    A new research paper from an international team of researchers led by Lancaster University scientists and published in Nature Food is the first to find evidence that breeding higher yielding dairy cattle offers significant potential to help Tanzania to reduce its dependency on foreign food imports and at the same time help meet its climate commitments.

    The findings show that two key targets of Tanzanian government policy – becoming self-sufficient in milk and cutting GHG emissions by a third – can be achieved simultaneously while increasing income in farming communities.

    Researchers carried out a household survey of 1,200 dairy farmers in Tanzania which was used as a baseline for a sectoral modelling analysis. The survey, which extended across four districts and two agro-ecological zones, was used to estimate milk production, yields from different cattle breeds and how the cattle are managed – for instance what they are fed and how disease is managed.

    Tanzania’s local cattle cope well with high temperatures but produce little milk. New breeds, which cross local cattle with high yielding European cows, produce three times as much milk, while still coping well with heat.

    The study takes as its starting point the Tanzanian Dairy Development Roadmap (DDR), a Government plan which, with support from stakeholders, aims to achieve dairy self-sufficiency by 2030. Currently, Tanzania’s low cost-competitiveness with trading partners results in the import of roughly 23 Million USD per year in dairy, and the DDR aims to replace these imports with domestic production. The researchers model how the Roadmap could be delivered through farmers changing from local to improved breeds of cattle, and feeding their cattle more nutritious, locally produced feed. Crucially, it assumes land that is already used in agriculture, mainly local pasture, is converted to grow feed crops, so farmers do not rely on imported feed and no forest needs to be cut down to grow it.

    “The idea was to model the Tanzanian Government’s planned interventions to increase milk production and also their targets for improved dairy breeds and feeding practices,” said Dr James Hawkins, an environmental economist from the Lancaster Environment Centre, and lead author of the study.

    “What is very important is understanding the interactions between cattle management and productivity because the carbon footprint is strongly related to the productivity of dairy cows.”

    The combination of more nutritious feed and more productive cattle means that production can be increased while reducing herd size, and cutting the amount of land needed to support the cattle, the study found. Better feed can increase the milk yield for local cows by up to 179% and for the higher yielding breeds by up to 130%. 

    The study modelled a series of scenarios, with different levels of milk production and adoption of new breeds and feeds. All the scenarios showed increases in production and a decrease in GHG emissions. The analysis showed that fulfilling the DDR targets for adopting improved breeds would enable Tanzania to meet 70% of the target milk production level while also fulfilling the country’s ambition to reduce GHG emissions from dairy by a third. The main driver of emissions reductions was from avoided land use change. While the model showed improving feed requires more cropland, a much larger decline in grasslands would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from forest clearance.

    “This is a win, win, win for Tanzania,” said Professor Mariana Rufino, from the Lancaster Environment Centre, principal investigator in the study, who has been researching dairy production in Africa for almost twenty years.

    “There have been a lot of studies showing how to mitigate emissions from the livestock sector that tell low-income countries what they should do, that they shouldn’t have livestock etc.  This study is special because we take Tanzania’s own ambitions, a country level target, and work out how they can achieve it, and more.

    “This Tanzanian policy only aims for food security, we find a way they can also improve incomes and meet their climate target at the same time.

    “Dairy is very good for poor communities. It generates daily cash, instead of farmers having to wait for a crop to be harvested once a year. There is a market for feed and lots of small businesses develop around dairy, so it generates income and alleviates poverty. Drinking milk can make a big difference to children in poor communities, providing a little bit of protein and concentrated micronutrients which they cannot get in other foods. So dairy can have a very important societal impact.”

    The income benefits are not equally distributed, the study shows, with farmers who do not have the resources to invest in, feed and care for higher yielding cattle losing out. The authors warn that while overall incomes increase, these farmers’ incomes could fall, especially if increasing production lowers the price they can charge for milk. Support policies should create safeguards for this key food sector, the researchers say.

    Dr Amos Omore, Tanzania country representative for the International Livestock Research Institute, said: “The findings of this paper have huge implications. The same quantity of milk being produced in smallholder dairy farms that dominate in eastern Africa can easily be produced with less than a quarter the number of animals currently, given the large yield gaps. What is required is more investment in sustainable animal productivity in smallholder farms – a clear win-win for better lives and greener planet.”

    The findings are outlined in the paper ‘High yield dairy cattle breeds improve farmer incomes, curtail greenhouse gas emissions and reduce dairy import dependency in Tanzania’

    Partners in the study include the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), both in Kenya, and the Universities of Reading, Queensland and Wisconsin-Madison.

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  • New Zealand targets cow burps to help reduce global warming

    New Zealand targets cow burps to help reduce global warming

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    PALMERSTON NORTH, New Zealand — How do you stop a cow from burping?

    It might sound like the start of a humorous riddle, but it’s the subject of a huge scientific inquiry in New Zealand. And the answer could have profound effects on the health of the planet.

    More specifically, the question is how to stop cows, sheep and other farm animals from belching out so much methane, a gas which doesn’t last as long as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but is at least 25 times more potent when it comes to global warming.

    Because cows can’t readily digest the grass they eat, they ferment it first in multiple stomach compartments, or rumen, a process that releases huge amounts of gas. Every time somebody eats a beef burger or drinks a milkshake, it comes at an environmental cost.

    New Zealand scientists are coming up with some surprising solutions that could put a big dent in those emissions. Among the more promising are selective breeding, genetically modified feed, methane inhibitors, and a potential game-changer — a vaccine.

    Nothing is off the table, from feeding the animals more seaweed to giving them a kombucha-style probiotic called “Kowbucha.” One British company has even developed a wearable harness for cows that oxidizes methane as it’s burped out.

    In New Zealand, the research has taken on a new urgency. Because farming is central to the economy, about half of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions come from farms, compared to less than 10% in the U.S. New Zealand’s 5 million people are outnumbered by 26 million sheep and 10 million cattle.

    As part of a push to become carbon neutral, New Zealand’s government has promised to reduce methane emissions from farm animals by up to 47% by 2050.

    Last month the government announced a plan to begin taxing farmers for animal burps, a world-first move that has angered many farmers. All sides are hoping they might catch a break from science.

    Much of the research is taking place at a Palmerston North campus, which some have jokingly taken to calling Gumboot Valley, in a nod to Silicon Valley.

    “I don’t believe there’s any other place that has the breadth of ambition that New Zealand has in terms of the range of technologies being investigated in any one place,” said Peter Janssen, a principal scientist at AgResearch, a government-owned company that employs about 900 people.

    Underpinning the research are studies indicating that reducing methane doesn’t need to harm the animals or affect the quality of the milk or meat. Janssen said the microbes that live in the animals and produce methane seem to be opportunistic rather than integral to digestion.

    He’s been working on developing a vaccine for the past 15 years and has focused intensively on it for the past five years. He said it has the potential to reduce the amount of methane belched by cows by 30% or more.

    “I certainly believe it’s going to work, because that’s the motivation for doing it,” he said.

    A vaccine would stimulate an animal’s immune system to produce antibodies, which would then dampen the output of the methane-producing microbes. One big upside of a vaccine is that it would likely only need to be administered once a year, or even perhaps even once in an animal’s lifetime.

    Working in a similar way, inhibitors are compounds administered to the animals that directly dampen the methane microbes.

    Inhibitors could also reduce methane by at least 30% and perhaps by up to 90%, according to Janssen. The challenge is that the compounds need to be safe for animal consumption and not pass through the meat or milk to humans. Inhibitors must also be regularly administered.

    Both inhibitors and vaccines are some years away from being market ready, Janssen said.

    But other technologies such as selective breeding, which could reduce methane output by 15%, will be rolled out onto sheep farms as early as next year, Janssen said. A similar program for cows may not be too far behind.

    Scientists have for years been testing sheep in chambers to chart differences in how much methane they belch. The low-emitters have been bred and produced low-emitting offspring. Scientists have also been tracking genetic characteristics common to low-emitting animals that make them readily identifiable.

    “I think one of the areas that New Zealand scientists, particularly, have made some great progress is in this whole area of animal breeding,” said Sinead Leahy, the principal science advisor at the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre. “And particularly, a lot of research has been done into breeding low emissions sheep.”

    Another target is the feed that animals eat, which scientists believe has the potential for reducing methane output by 20% to 30%.

    At one greenhouse on the campus, scientists are developing genetically modified clover. Visitors must wear booties and medical scrubs and avoid putting down objects to prevent any cross-contamination.

    The scientists explain that because New Zealand farm animals eat outside in fields most of the time rather than in barns, methane-reducing feed additives like Bovaer, developed by Dutch company DSM, aren’t as useful.

    Instead, they are looking to genetically modify the ryegrass and white clover that the New Zealand animals predominantly eat.

    With the clover, scientists have found a way to increase tannins, which helps block methane production.

    “What this team has done is they’ve actually identified, through their research, a master switch that switches on condensed tannins in the leaves,” said Linda Johnson, a science group manager at AgResearch.

    Laboratory analysis indicates the modified clover reduces methane production by 15% to 19%, Johnson said.

    The clover program goes hand-in-hand with a ryegrass program.

    Richard Scott, an AgResearch senior scientist, said they have been able to increase the oil levels in ryegrass leaves by about 2%, which studies indicate should translate to a 10% drop in methane emissions.

    But like the inhibitors and vaccine, the feed program is still some years away from being farm ready. Scientists have completed controlled tests in the U.S. and are planning a bigger field trial in Australia.

    However, New Zealand has strict rules that ban most genetically modified crops, a regulatory barrier that the scientists will need to overcome if they are to introduce the modified feed to the nation’s farms.

    In other research, dairy company Fonterra is trialing its probiotic Kowbucha concoction and British company Zelp is continuing to trial and refine its wearable harnesses. Other trials have indicated that a red seaweed called Asparagopsis reduces methane when eaten by cows.

    But farmers aren’t waiting around for all the research to come to fruition. On the Kaiwaiwai Dairies farm near the town of Featherston, farmer Aidan Bichan said they’ve been reducing their methane output by getting more efficient.

    He said that includes increasing the milk production from each cow, using less processed feed, and replacing milking cows less frequently.

    “At a farm level, we’ve got to do our bit to help save the planet,” Bichan said.

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  • New Zealand targets cow burps to help reduce global warming

    New Zealand targets cow burps to help reduce global warming

    [ad_1]

    PALMERSTON NORTH, New Zealand — How do you stop a cow from burping?

    It might sound like the start of a humorous riddle, but it’s the subject of a huge scientific inquiry in New Zealand. And the answer could have profound effects on the health of the planet.

    More specifically, the question is how to stop cows, sheep and other farm animals from belching out so much methane, a gas which doesn’t last as long as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but is at least 25 times more potent when it comes to global warming.

    Because cows can’t readily digest the grass they eat, they ferment it first in multiple stomach compartments, or rumen, a process that releases huge amounts of gas. Every time somebody eats a beef burger or drinks a milkshake, it comes at an environmental cost.

    New Zealand scientists are coming up with some surprising solutions that could put a big dent in those emissions. Among the more promising are selective breeding, genetically modified feed, methane inhibitors, and a potential game-changer — a vaccine.

    Nothing is off the table, from feeding the animals more seaweed to giving them a kombucha-style probiotic called “Kowbucha.” One British company has even developed a wearable harness for cows that oxidizes methane as it’s burped out.

    In New Zealand, the research has taken on a new urgency. Because farming is central to the economy, about half of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions come from farms, compared to less than 10% in the U.S. New Zealand’s 5 million people are outnumbered by 26 million sheep and 10 million cattle.

    As part of a push to become carbon neutral, New Zealand’s government has promised to reduce methane emissions from farm animals by up to 47% by 2050.

    Last month the government announced a plan to begin taxing farmers for animal burps, a world-first move that has angered many farmers. All sides are hoping they might catch a break from science.

    Much of the research is taking place at a Palmerston North campus, which some have jokingly taken to calling Gumboot Valley, in a nod to Silicon Valley.

    “I don’t believe there’s any other place that has the breadth of ambition that New Zealand has in terms of the range of technologies being investigated in any one place,” said Peter Janssen, a principal scientist at AgResearch, a government-owned company that employs about 900 people.

    Underpinning the research are studies indicating that reducing methane doesn’t need to harm the animals or affect the quality of the milk or meat. Janssen said the microbes that live in the animals and produce methane seem to be opportunistic rather than integral to digestion.

    He’s been working on developing a vaccine for the past 15 years and has focused intensively on it for the past five years. He said it has the potential to reduce the amount of methane belched by cows by 30% or more.

    “I certainly believe it’s going to work, because that’s the motivation for doing it,” he said.

    A vaccine would stimulate an animal’s immune system to produce antibodies, which would then dampen the output of the methane-producing microbes. One big upside of a vaccine is that it would likely only need to be administered once a year, or even perhaps even once in an animal’s lifetime.

    Working in a similar way, inhibitors are compounds administered to the animals that directly dampen the methane microbes.

    Inhibitors could also reduce methane by at least 30% and perhaps by up to 90%, according to Janssen. The challenge is that the compounds need to be safe for animal consumption and not pass through the meat or milk to humans. Inhibitors must also be regularly administered.

    Both inhibitors and vaccines are some years away from being market ready, Janssen said.

    But other technologies such as selective breeding, which could reduce methane output by 15%, will be rolled out onto sheep farms as early as next year, Janssen said. A similar program for cows may not be too far behind.

    Scientists have for years been testing sheep in chambers to chart differences in how much methane they belch. The low-emitters have been bred and produced low-emitting offspring. Scientists have also been tracking genetic characteristics common to low-emitting animals that make them readily identifiable.

    “I think one of the areas that New Zealand scientists, particularly, have made some great progress is in this whole area of animal breeding,” said Sinead Leahy, the principal science advisor at the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre. “And particularly, a lot of research has been done into breeding low emissions sheep.”

    Another target is the feed that animals eat, which scientists believe has the potential for reducing methane output by 20% to 30%.

    At one greenhouse on the campus, scientists are developing genetically modified clover. Visitors must wear booties and medical scrubs and avoid putting down objects to prevent any cross-contamination.

    The scientists explain that because New Zealand farm animals eat outside in fields most of the time rather than in barns, methane-reducing feed additives like Bovaer, developed by Dutch company DSM, aren’t as useful.

    Instead, they are looking to genetically modify the ryegrass and white clover that the New Zealand animals predominantly eat.

    With the clover, scientists have found a way to increase tannins, which helps block methane production.

    “What this team has done is they’ve actually identified, through their research, a master switch that switches on condensed tannins in the leaves,” said Linda Johnson, a science group manager at AgResearch.

    Laboratory analysis indicates the modified clover reduces methane production by 15% to 19%, Johnson said.

    The clover program goes hand-in-hand with a ryegrass program.

    Richard Scott, an AgResearch senior scientist, said they have been able to increase the oil levels in ryegrass leaves by about 2%, which studies indicate should translate to a 10% drop in methane emissions.

    But like the inhibitors and vaccine, the feed program is still some years away from being farm ready. Scientists have completed controlled tests in the U.S. and are planning a bigger field trial in Australia.

    However, New Zealand has strict rules that ban most genetically modified crops, a regulatory barrier that the scientists will need to overcome if they are to introduce the modified feed to the nation’s farms.

    In other research, dairy company Fonterra is trialing its probiotic Kowbucha concoction and British company Zelp is continuing to trial and refine its wearable harnesses. Other trials have indicated that a red seaweed called Asparagopsis reduces methane when eaten by cows.

    But farmers aren’t waiting around for all the research to come to fruition. On the Kaiwaiwai Dairies farm near the town of Featherston, farmer Aidan Bichan said they’ve been reducing their methane output by getting more efficient.

    He said that includes increasing the milk production from each cow, using less processed feed, and replacing milking cows less frequently.

    “At a farm level, we’ve got to do our bit to help save the planet,” Bichan said.

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