|
The European Commission adopts landmark
list of permitted food health claims.
A list of 222 health claims among more than 40,000 has been
approved by the Commission on may 16th. This list will be used
throughout the EU. Misleading claims from the market will be
removed before the end of the year. |
|
|
The University of Wageningen withdraws a
statement promoting milk against cardiovascular diseases.
Following a bitter controversy about allegations by the
University of Wageningen, in the Netherlands, authorities of
the University have accepted to modify their description of
the content of a paper published with American colleagues in
the American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The initial statement was
misleading in that it suggested that three glasses of milk a
day would protect against cardiovascular diseases, while no
such conclusion can safely be drawn from the study. |
|
|
Recent
patents on the use of antioxidant agents in food.
The application of antioxidant ingredients is a common way to
delay and prevent the detrimental effect of oxygen in foods.
However, consumer trends towards healthier and safer foods,
together with the increasing concern for the potential
toxicity of some antioxidants are leading research efforts
towards the use of antioxidants obtained from natural sources,
such as plant phenols, essential oils and chitosan. This paper
reviews the latest published studies and issued patents on the
use of antioxidants agents in foodstuffs. The properties of
the most commonly used antioxidants as well as natural
antioxidants are revised. Moreover, examples of recent patents
on the application of antioxidants to different foodstuffs
(meat, fish, vegetables, fruits and beverages) are given. |
|
|
AMAbiotics participates to the effort of
the Beijing Genome Institute to sequence the genome of Escherichia
coli EHEC serotype O104:H4.
Helping Europe, the BGI, delocalized in Shenzhen (next to Hong
Kong) sequences the genome of the deadly EHEC strain that
affects Germany. This work will allow investigators to
characterize the features that makes this strain so dangerous.
It appears to be quite similar to a strain that affected a
Korean patient in 2006, and the way it spread to Germany is a
puzzling and interesting open question. The work is published
in The New England Journal of Medicine |
|
|
A protein from royal gelly is necessary
and sufficient to trigger the development of bees into queens.
Masaki Kamakura has demonstrated that aged royal jelly has no
effect. The reason is that its effect allowing the
differentiation of workers into queens (that are much larger
and live much longer) is entirely caused by a protein,
royalactin. The remarkable effect of this protein extends to
other insects such as the fruit fly, Drosophila. |
|
|
Selenium
does not prevent cancer.
A trace element essential to humans, selenium was often
predicted to be active in preventing cancer, because it acts
against free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS). A
recent study shows that it has no positive effect. |
|
|
Sulfite,
widely used as a food preservative, is toxic for neurons
involved in memory.
In the absence of metabolic capacities to oxidise or reduce
sulfite this common product of sulfur metabolism, used as a
food preservative kills hippocampal neurons. |
|
|
Choline is essential to humans, but it
promotes cardiovascular diseases.
Lecithin, and choline are common dietary component that some
people even take as a supplement that are converted by the gut
microbiota to harmful metabolites linked to heart diseases.
Bioremediation of the gut flora could be a way to prevent
their deleterious effects. |
|
|
Even
pathogens communicate.
AMAbiotics' philosophy is to take into account the overall
metabolism of the organism of interest. In the case of man,
this means to analyze the human metabolism, as supplemented by
that of human's flora. The present study demonstrates that
even microbes display positive interactions: they commmunicate
chemically, and collaborate. The purpose of this paper is to
analyze a case of pathogenicity, but it goes without saying
that this behavior is general, and often beneficial. There is
an effect of community, and this effect is certainly central
to good nutrition. |
|
|
Chromium
is a poison.
The chromic ion has long be used for leather tanning, making
animal skin rot proof, showing high toxicity even to microbes.
It is irreversibly binding to proteins, often replacing
essential ions involved in catalysis. It is likely that
chronic use will lead to irreversible damage in the human body
and its use should be restricted
to particular chelates and submitted to analyses similar
to those required for authorization of drugs on the market and
certainly not sold over the counter. |
|
|
Rapid time fluctuations of the ileon
microbiota.
Analysis of the microbiota of patients undergoing ileostomy
permitted investigators to show that their flora varies
rapidly during the day, and is quite diverse. It is also
differing from that found in the colon. |
|
|
Brain
lactate increases with aging.
Investigators from the Karolinska Institut in Sweden have
shown that lactate concentration can be used to monitor in
mice the true aging status of the brain. |
|
|
Gene+virus+irritation
= disease
It has long been known that the genetic background is
important for diseases. Yet, the correspondence: a gene = a
disease is seldom observed. Now, in an animal model,
investigators have shown that co-occurrence of a gene (present
in 50% of europeans), a norovirus (responsible of the
diarrhoeas witnessed frequently for a few decades), and of
substances causing an irritation of the intestine, is enough
to trigger the irritable bowel disease (Crohn's disease, a
chronic irritation of the gut, often requiring heavy surgery).
But this is not without hope: intestine "cleansing" with a
massive antibioitc treatment appears to permit returning to
normal semble permettre le retour à la normale. The
"agressive" component in the disease shows that food plays a
considerable role, and the importance of the genetic
background argues for a personalised nutrition (and a good
hygiene). |
|
|
EFSA
rejects claims for a patent for probiotics.
A dossier containing 13 randomised controlled trials, 6
observational studies, and 15 non-human studies has failed to
impress European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) scientists
because the four strains in question were not sufficiently
characterised. |
| |
Older news
|
