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Tag: University of Massachusetts Amherst

  • Almond Milk Yogurt: More Nutritious Than Dairy-Based Yogurt

    Almond Milk Yogurt: More Nutritious Than Dairy-Based Yogurt

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    Newswise — AMHERST, Mass. – In a nutritional comparison of plant-based and dairy yogurts, almond milk yogurt came out on top, according to research led by a University of Massachusetts Amherst food science major.

    “Plant-based yogurts overall have less total sugar, less sodium and more fiber than dairy, but they have less protein, calcium and potassium than dairy yogurt,” says lead author Astrid D’Andrea, a graduating senior whose paper was published May 25 in a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Nutrition titled Food of the Future: Meat and Dairy Alternatives. “But when looking at the overall nutrient density, comparing dairy yogurt to plant-based yogurt, with the nutrients that we looked at, almond yogurt has a significantly higher nutrient density than dairy yogurt and all other plant-based yogurts.”

    Working in the lab of senior author Alissa Nolden, a sensory scientist and assistant professor of food science, D’Andrea was interested in comparing the nutritional values of plant-based and dairy yogurts, an area of research she found lacking. Driven by concerns over environmental sustainability and eating less animal-based food products, the plant-based yogurt market is expected to explode from $1.6 billion in 2021 to $6.5 billion in 2030.

    “Plant-based diets are gaining popularity, especially in American culture, but just because it’s plant-based doesn’t mean it’s more nutritious,” says D’Andrea, of Hazlet, N.J., who is heading to graduate school in food science at Penn State. “There has to be specific research that answers that question.”

    D’Andrea collected nutritional information for 612 yogurts, launched between 2016 and 2021, using the Mintel Global New Products Database, accessed through UMass Libraries. She used the Nutrient Rich Foods (NRF) Index, which assigns scores based on the nutrient density of foods. “This allowed us to compare the nutritional density of the yogurts based on nutrients to encourage (protein, fiber, calcium, iron, potassium, vitamin D) and nutrients to limit (saturated fat, total sugar, sodium),” D’Andrea writes in her paper.

    The researchers chose the NRF model based on the nutritional benefits of dairy yogurt, which provides a complete protein, something plant-based products are unable to do.

    Of the 612 yogurts analyzed, 159 were full-fat dairy, 303 were low- and nonfat dairy, 61 were coconut, 44 were almond, 30 were cashew and 15 were oat. The researchers used the NRF Index to rank the yogurts from the highest to lowest nutrient density: almond, oat, low- and nonfat dairy, full-fat dairy, cashew and coconut.

    D’Andrea attributed the high scores of almond and oat yogurts to their low levels of total sugar, sodium and saturated fat. She and Nolden say the study’s findings can inform the food industry on ways to improve the formulation and nutritional composition of plant-based yogurts.

    One option the researchers offer is creating a hybrid yogurt that is both plant- and dairy-based. This will add protein, vitamin B12 and calcium while still minimizing total sugar, sodium and saturated fat.

    “Going from dairy all the way to plant-based is a big change,” Nolden says. “There are changes in the nutritional profile, and there’s change in the sensory profile, which might prevent consumers from trying it.”

    In fact, a recent study conducted in the Nolden lab led by former UMass Amherst visiting researcher Maija Greis investigated consumer acceptance of blended plant-based and dairy yogurt and found that people preferred the blended yogurt over the plant-based one.

    “Blending provides advantages,” Nolden says. “It provides a complete protein, and the dairy part helps to form the gelling structure within the yogurt that so far we are unable to replicate in a plant-based system.”

    The UMass Amherst team says further research is warranted, based on their findings that suggest a way to maximize the nutrition and functional characteristics of yogurt.

    “If we can blend plant-based and dairy yogurt, we can achieve a desirable sensory profile, a potentially better nutritional profile and have a smaller impact on the environment,” Nolden says.

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  • Researchers study links land use changes to water quality & quantity

    Researchers study links land use changes to water quality & quantity

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    Newswise — AMHERST, Mass. – Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently published a study in the journal PLOS Water that focuses on the Sudbury-Assabet and Concord watershed in eastern Massachusetts, and which links hydrological changes, including floods, drought and runoff, to changing patterns of land use.

    “We all live in a watershed” says Timothy Randhir, professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author. “We’re constantly modifying our landscape, turning what were once forests into roads, parking lots and backyards. We’re changing the landscape from one that was once hydrologically resilient to one that pushes water downstream.”

    But it can be hard to see the complex links between changes in land use and changes in the hydrological cycle. For instance, much of Massachusetts is now subject to the paradoxical situation in which summer drought follows spring flooding. Surely if there’s enough extra water to flood the streets in towns throughout the state then there should be plenty of groundwater left for drinking, lawn watering and maintaining the levels of streams and lakes?

    This is where thinking like a watershed comes in. “Every drop of rain has two pathways when it falls,” says Randhir. “It can either run off the land into a stream, or it can infiltrate the soil and slowly trickle down to the water table.” But by paving over large swaths of land, burying swamps and wetlands and channelizing rivers, we have made it far more difficult for rain to infiltrate the soil, increasing the likelihood of drought. At the same time, all that runoff pours into streams and rivers, which in turn grows into a deluge as it thunders downstream, fed by even more runoff as it progresses.

    To make the links between land use and hydrological effect visible, and to project these effects into the future, Randhir and his graduate student, first author Ammara Talib, focused on the Sudbury-Assabet and Concord watershed in eastern Massachusetts, an area that incorporates both rural areas and suburbs of Boston. The pair fed historical data describing the changing land-use into a model which projected the trends for the years 2035, 2065 and 2100. The team then fed the results of the land-use model into a hydological model called the Hydrological Simulation Program-FORTRAN.

    What they found was that, by 2100, the total forested area will decrease by 51% and impervious areas (roads and parking lots) will increase 75%. These changes will increase annual stream flow by 3%, while runoff will grow by a whopping 69% annually. All this increased runoff will mean more topsoil and other solids in the water (an increase of 54%), and 12% and 13% increases in phosphorous and nitrogen concentrations, respectively.

    But none of this need happen.

    “We can plan for the future on the watershed scale,” says Randhir, by urban planning that implements best practices for sustainable and site-specific land-use measures. These can include creating rain gardens, using permeable pavement in large parking lots and employing vegetated swales to slow the runoff.

    “The watershed is a signature of the health of the landscape,” says Randhir. “The quality of life in any particular landscape depends on how the watershed is functioning.”

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  • To save nature, focus on populations, not species

    To save nature, focus on populations, not species

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    Newswise — AMHERST, Mass. – Human-released greenhouse gasses are causing the world to warm, and with that warming comes increasing stress for many of the planet’s plants and animals. That stress is so great that many scientists believe we are currently in the midst of the “sixth extinction,” when entire species are disappearing up to 10,000 times faster than before the industrial era. However, scientists have been uncertain which ecosystems, and which species, are most at risk. New research, recently published in Nature Climate Change, is the first to show that the focus on species-level risk obscures a wide variability in temperature tolerance, even within the same species, and that this variability is greater for marine species than terrestrial ones. The findings have immediate implications for management and conservation practices and offer a window of hope in the effort to adapt to a rapidly warming world.

    “One of the most important biological discoveries in the last century is that evolution can happen much more quickly than previously thought,” says Brian Cheng, professor of marine ecology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the paper’s senior author. “One of the implications of this is that different populations of the exact same species can adapt to their local environments more readily than traditional biology would have thought possible.”

    It turns out that this rapid, localized adaptation may be able to help ensure survival in a warming world.

    By conducting a metanalysis of 90 previously published studies, from which Cheng and his co-authors mined data on 61 species, the team was able to construct a set of “upper thermal limits”—specific temperatures above which each species could not survive. However, by zooming in further and looking at 305 distinct populations drawn from that pool of 61 species, they found that different populations of the same marine species often had widely different thermal limits. This suggests that some populations have evolved different abilities to tolerate high temperatures. The key then, is to keep different populations of the same species connected so that the populations that have adapted to the higher temperatures can pass this advantage on to the populations with the lower thermal limits.

    In other words, imagine a wide-ranging marine species, such as the diminutive Atlantic killifish, which occurs from the warm Florida coast of the United States north to the frigid waters of Newfoundland, Canada. The northern killifish populations may be better able to withstand warming waters if some of their southern kin are able to naturally shift their range to the north.

    “Scale matters,” says Matthew Sasaki, a marine biologist and evolutionary ecologist who completed this research as part of his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Connecticut and is the paper’s lead author. “The patterns you see across species aren’t the same you see within species, and the big-picture story doesn’t necessarily match what is happening on the local level.”

    In yet another twist, the team, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and was composed of biologists specializing in terrestrial as well as marine ecosystems, discovered that this intra-species variability was primarily a feature of animals living in the ocean and intertidal areas. Populations of widespread species that live on land or in freshwater exhibit far more homogeneity in their thermal limits, and thus could be more sensitive to rising temperatures. However, on land, plants and animals can take advantage of microclimates to cool down and avoid extreme temperatures, by moving into shady spots, for example.

    Taken together, the research suggests that a one-size-fits-all-species approach to conservation and management won’t work. Instead, write the authors, we need to understand how populations have adapted to their local conditions if we want to predict their vulnerability to changing conditions. A more effective approach would include ensuring that marine species can find wide swaths of undamaged habitat throughout their entire range, so that different populations of the same species can mix and pass on the adaptations that help them survive warmer waters. And on land, we need to maintain large patches of cool ecosystems—such as old-growth forests—that terrestrial species can use as refuges.

    “The glimmer of hope here,” says Cheng, “is that with conservation policies tailored to individual populations, we can buy them time to adapt to the warming world.”

     

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