Effects of food processing on the stability of food allergens

The ubiquitous presence of allergens in the human food supply coupled with increased awareness of food allergies warrants undertaking appropriate preventive measures to protect sensitive consumers from unwanted exposure to offending food allergens. Attempts to reduce or eliminate food allergenicity through food processing have met with mixed results. The rationale for using food processing to reduce/eliminate allergenicity and limitations to using this approach are discussed.     

有机食品、绿色食品和无公害食品

介绍了有机食品、绿色食品和无公害食品的内涵及标准体系,并进行了分析比较。     

Influence of food size and food quantity on the feeding of the mussel Dreissena polymorpha

Summary In common with many other suspension feeders, the freshwater mussel Dreissena polymorpha has a maximum filtration rate at low food concentrations and a maximum ingestion rate at high food concentrations. These high rates, which reflect the potential maximum food uptake of the animal, are called the filtration capacity and the ingestion capacity respectively. The ingestion capacity was attained without forming pseudofaeces with Chlamydomonas reinhardii as food. The incipient limiting level could be calculated as the quotient of these two values. A decrease of the filtration rate at high food concentrations was correlated with changes in pumping activity, which showed more frequent interruptions, or a lower level of water transport. Dreissena can filter out particles of diameter greater than 0.7 m from the water. Retention reaches a plateau at about 5 m particle diameter. Scanning electron micrographs of the arrangement of the cilia on the gill filaments are given.     

食物和季节因素对杂色山雀贮食行为的影响

鸟类的贮食行为受很多因素的影响,其中食物和季节是两个十分关键的因子。采用人工投食的方式研究杂色山雀冬、春季节对松子和葵花籽两种食物的贮食选择,以及食物和季节因素对贮食位点的空间分布和微生境选择的影响。结果发现,杂色山雀优先贮食松子,仅在春季贮食少量葵花籽;主要选择树皮裂缝、灌木根部、草丛、石缝和苔藓下面五种生境进行贮食;其贮食位点的空间分布呈分散状态,集中于投食点100m范围内,密度分布随食物搬运距离的增加而递减。其贮食模式和贮食位点的微生境选择均受季节因素的影响,其中,贮食模式的季节变化可能是受生境中松子这种重要食物可获得性的下降所致,而杂色山雀冬季对树皮裂缝的利用率明显高于春季,可能是与冬季的积雪覆盖限制了其对地面贮食点的利用有关。杂色山雀的就近贮食模式可能是为了增加贮食效率,关于不同个体之间贮食位点的差异,以及季节变化对贮食位点的空间分布格局的影响还需进一步研究。     

The food of the Afrotropical nightjars

Jackson, H.D. 2000. The food of the Afrotrapical nightjars. Ostrich 71(3&4): 408-415. A synthesis of 722 published and unpublished records of nightjar stomach contents from Afrotropical specimens was undertaken. Coleoptera were found in 84.6% of the stomachs, often in substantial numbers, beetles providing these birds with their staple diet. Lepidoptera occurred in 34.9% of the stomachs and were often present in large numbers; moths are an extremely important part of the nightjar diet in the Afrotropics, especially during winter. Orthoptera, Hemiptera and Dictyoptera, although present in 24.7, 16.3 and 11.5% of the stomachs, respectively, usually occurred in rather small numbers. Hymenoptera and lsoptera were often present in great numbers, yet were found in only 10.4 and 10.1% of the stomachs, respectively, so a limited number of individual nightjars had found emerging swarms of alate ants or termites in season. Neuroptera, Diptera, Odonata and Dermaptera were found in a few stomachs (2.4, 1.2, 0.6 and 0.3%, respectively) but these insects clearly play a very small part in the diet of nightjars in the Afrotropics. Similarities and differences in diet between some closely related nightjar species are discussed. Grit was found in 16 stomachs only, so deliberate ingestion of stones to aid digestion is regarded as extremely unlikely among nightjars in the Afrotropics. The contents of a full stomach may account for as much as 20-25% of the body mass of a nightjar.     

On the food favoritism of twins

In the present study, there is a continuation of the authors' earlier investigations concerning food preference/refusal patterns in a group of Hungarian adult MZ and DZ twin pairs. A "Food Like/Dislike Chart" (FLDC), adapted to local nutritional habits, was applied. In order to characterize the degree of intra-pair concordance referring to the food favoritism, the concept of the "Taste Concordance Point" (TCP) was introduced. On the basis of the comparison of the TCP values obtained for the MZ and DZ pairs the conclusion can be drawn that gustatory habits are presumably influenced also by genetic factors. The results allow the possibility of applying TCP to testing zygosity.     

Application of genetic and genetic-engineering methods to the production of food and food additives

The last decade saw remarkable progress in the quantitative and qualitative improvement of microorganisms applied in the foodstuff industry because methods of genetic engineering were used. Compared to the classic methods of mutagenesis and hybridization, genetic engineering facilitates the changing of genes coding for certain products or certain qualities and their new combination with other genes in either the donor or any other host cell. Success achieved so far in the changing of microorganisms by mutagenesis, hybridization and genetic engineering is explained with some examples. These refer to microorganisms used in the production of enzymes, amino acids, edible organic acids, aromatic and similar products.     

Microbial food chains and food webs

Mathematical models for simple microbial food chains and food webs in continuous culture are developed and analyzed. A model for competition of two microbial species for a single scarce resource is also presented as a degenerate case of the food web model. Two models for food chains are developed. The first is based on a model of microbial growth (Monod's) that is widely mentioned and used at the present time. The second is based on a generalization of that model that recent experimental results on microbial food chains seem to require. Experimental data for microbial food webs are almost entirely lacking but a tentative model having what are felt to be the right properties is developed and analyzed. The results obtained from these models seem to be consistent in most circumstances with current ecological thinking on community dynamics.     

Slow food and the politics of pork fat: Italian food and European identity

This paper explores the emergence of the Slow Food Movement, an international consumer movement dedicated to the protection of ‘endangered foods.’ The history of one of these ‘endangered foods’, lardo di Colonnata, provides the ethnographic window through which I examine Slow Food's cultural politics. The paper seeks to understand the politics of ‘slowness’ within current debates over European identity, critiques of neo-liberal models of rationality, and the significant ideological shift towards market-driven politics in advanced capitalist societies.     

Energy and the food system

Modern agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil resources. Both direct energy use for crop management and indirect energy use for fertilizers, pesticides and machinery production have contributed to the major increases in food production seen since the 1960s. However, the relationship between energy inputs and yields is not linear. Low-energy inputs can lead to lower yields and perversely to higher energy demands per tonne of harvested product. At the other extreme, increasing energy inputs can lead to ever-smaller yield gains. Although fossil fuels remain the dominant source of energy for agriculture, the mix of fuels used differs owing to the different fertilization and cultivation requirements of individual crops. Nitrogen fertilizer production uses large amounts of natural gas and some coal, and can account for more than 50 per cent of total energy use in commercial agriculture. Oil accounts for between 30 and 75 per cent of energy inputs of UK agriculture, depending on the cropping system. While agriculture remains dependent on fossil sources of energy, food prices will couple to fossil energy prices and food production will remain a significant contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Technological developments, changes in crop management, and renewable energy will all play important roles in increasing the energy efficiency of agriculture and reducing its reliance of fossil resources.     

Modeling the microbial food web

Models of the microbial food web have their origin in the debate over the importance of bacteria as an energetic subsidy for higher trophic levels leading to harvestable fisheries. Conceptualization of the microbial food web preceded numerical models by 10–15 years. Pomeroy's work was central to both efforts. Elements necessary for informative and comprehensive models of microbial loops in plankton communities include coupled carbon and nitrogen flows utilizing a size-based approach to structuring and parameterizing the food web. Realistic formulation of nitrogen flows requires recognition that both nitrogenous and nonnitrogenous organic matter are important substrates for bacteria. Nitrogen regeneration driven by simple mass-specific excretion constants seems to overestimate the role of bacteria in the regeneration process. Quantitative assessment of the link-sink question, in which the original loop models are grounded, requires sophisticated analysis of size-based trophic structures. The effects of recycling complicate calculation of the link between bacteria or dissolved organic matter and mesozooplankton, and indirect effects show that the link might be much stronger than simple analyses have suggested. Examples drawn from a series of oceanic mixed layer plankton models are used to illustrate some of these points. Single-size class models related to traditional P-Z-N approaches are incapable of simulating bacterial biomass cycles in some locations (e.g., Bermuda) but appear to be adequate for more strongly seasonal regimes at higher latitudes.     

Current food web models cannot explain the overall topological structure of observed food webs

Topological food webs illustrating “who eats whom” in different systems exhibit similar, non‐random, structures suggesting that general rules govern food web structure. Current food web models correctly predict many measures of food web topology from knowledge of species richness and connectance (fraction of possible predator–prey links that actually occur), together with assumptions about the ecological rules governing “who eats whom”. However, current measures are relatively insensitive to small changes in topology. Improvement of, and discrimination among, current models requires development of new measures of food web structure. Here I examine whether current food web models (cascade, niche, and nested hierarchy models, plus a random null model) can predict a new measure of food web structure, structural stability. Structural stability complements other measures of food web topology because it is sensitive to changes in topology that other measures often miss. The cascade and null models respectively over‐ and underpredict structural stability for a set of 17 high‐quality food webs. While the niche and nested hierarchy models provide unbiased predictions on average, their 95% confidence intervals frequently fail to include the observed data. Observed structural stabilities for all models are overdispersed compared to model predictions, and predicted and observed structural stabilities are uncorrelated, indicating that important sources of variation in structural stability are not captured by the models. Crucially, poor model performance arises because observed variation in structural stability is unrelated to variation in species richness and connectance. In contrast, almost all other measures of food web topology vary with species richness and connectance in natural webs. No model that takes species richness and connectance as the only input parameters can reproduce observed variation in structural stability. Further progress in predicting and explaining food web topology will require fundamentally new models based on different input parameters.