Home About us Contact | |||
Nutritional Research (nutritional + research)
Selected AbstractsLimonoids as cancer chemopreventive agentsJOURNAL OF THE SCIENCE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE, Issue 3 2006Sohail Ejaz Abstract Nutritional research on the health benefits of substances in plant foods has recently advanced to a new stage. The research frontier has moved from study of classical vitamin deficiency diseases to study of the thousands of phytochemicals that may have important physiological effects. Recent research suggests that citrus fruit consumers may be getting another health benefit from orange juice and other citrus products called limonoids, which appear to possess substantial anticancer activity. Limonoids are highly oxidized triterpenes present in Rutaceae and Maliaceae families. Several citrus limonoids have recently been subjected to anticancer screening utilizing laboratory animals and human breast cancer cells. The experimental results described that citrus limonoids may provide substantial anticancer actions. The compounds have been shown to be free of toxic effects in animal models, so potential exists for the use of limonoids against human cancer in either natural fruits, in citrus fortified with limonoids, or in purified forms of specific limonoids. Although the initial studies are very promising they have been conducted primarily with in vitro cell culture and animal models. Thus, research is needed to determine whether the limonoids may be useful in preventing or treating cancer in humans. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry [source] Evaluation of Experimental and Practical Diets for Walleye Stizostedion vitreumJOURNAL OF THE WORLD AQUACULTURE SOCIETY, Issue 3 2002Anant S. Bharadwaj Culture of walleye Sfizostedion vitreum is one of the largest components of public sector aquaculture in the eastern U.S. and there is increasing interest in private sector culture. However, the nutritional requirements of walleye are unknown and experimental diets for use in quantifying nutritional requirements have not been identified. We formulated four experimental and four practical diets and fed those to triplicate groups of walleye with an initial weight of 13 g per fish. The experimental diets contained either casein (CAS), casein + gelatin (CG), casein + arginine (CA), or casein + gelatin + crystalline amino acids (CGAA) as sources of amino acids. The practical diets were formulated to mimic salmon grower (SG) and trout grower (TG) diets, a fish meal-free diet for trout (TFMF), and a walleye grower (WG) diet. Fish were fed twice daily to satiation for 9 wk. Feed consumption, percent weight gain, specific growth rates, feed efficiency, protein efficiency ratio, and protein retention efficiency were not significantly different among fish fed CGAA, SG, and TG, but those values were significantly higher than in fish fed other diets. Weight gain of fish fed CGAA was approximately 80% of that in fish fed SG and 91% of that in fish fed TG. Protein retention efficiency of fish fed CGAA was approximately 69% and 81% of that observed for fish fed SG, and TG, respectively. In general, the carcasses of fish fed diets CGAA, SG and TG had significantly lower moisture and ash concentrations, and higher lipid levels than fish fed other diets. There were no significant differences in carcass protein concentration, muscle proximate composition, or liver lipid concentration among treatments. Livers from fish fed all diets were characterized by microvesicular degeneration and glycogen accumulation in hepatocytes. Results from the study indicate that CGAA can be used as a basal experimental diet in future nutritional research with juvenile walleye and confirms the benefits of trout and salmon grower diets. Fish meal-free diets formulated around the requirements for rainbow trout were consumed at approximately 80% of the values in fish fed TG and SG, but weight gain was approximately 20% of that in fish fed TG and SG. It appears the nutritional requirements for walleye are different than those of rainbow trout. [source] Enhancing nutritional research within an aged care facilityNUTRITION & DIETETICS, Issue 2 2008Caryl NOWSON Abstract Aim:, The present study examined the barriers to the implementation of a nutritional intervention project and sought ways to enhance future projects. Methods:, The study, utilising a qualitative approach, included participants from key areas involved in the project and who were employed by either the university or regional aged care facility. Results:, Through analysis the themes ,successes', ,stumbling blocks' and ,solutions' emerged. Within these themes descriptive stories of what worked, what did not work and suggestions for future projects are depicted. Conclusions:, Communication was the connecting element of each theme, suggesting effective verbal and written communication that ensures ownership by all involved is essential for successful clinical research projects. Strategies to enhance this process have been included to assist future researchers. [source] A feed is only as good as its ingredients , a review of ingredient evaluation strategies for aquaculture feedsAQUACULTURE NUTRITION, Issue 1 2007B.D. GLENCROSS Abstract The evaluation of feed ingredients is crucial to nutritional research and feed development for aquaculture species. In evaluating ingredients for use in aquaculture feeds, there are several important knowledge components that should be understood to enable the judicious use of a particular ingredient in feed formulation. This includes information on (1) ingredient digestibilities, (2) ingredient palatability and (3) nutrient utilization and interference. Diet design, feeding strategy, faecal collection method and method of calculation all have important implications on the determination of the digestible value of nutrients from any ingredient. There are several ways in which palatability of ingredients can be assessed, usually based on variable inclusion levels of the ingredient in question in a reference diet and feeding of those diets under an apparent satietal or self-regulating feeding regimes. However, the design of the diets, the parameters of assessment and the feeding regime can all be subject to variation depending on subtleties of the experimental design. Clearly, issues relating to feed intake are the key performance criteria in palatability assessments, and it is important that such experiments maintain sufficient stringency to allow some self-discrimination of the test feeds by the fish. The ability of fish to use nutrients from the test ingredient, or defining factors that interfere with that process, is perhaps the most complex and variable part of the ingredient evaluation process. It is crucial to discriminate effects on feed intake from effects on utilization of nutrients from ingredients (for growth and other metabolic processes). To allow an increased focus on nutrient utilization by the animals, there are several experimental strategies that can be adopted, which are based on variations in diet design and feeding regime used. Other issues such as ingredient functionality, influence on immune status and effects on organoleptic qualities are also important consideration in determining the value of ingredients in aquaculture feed formulations. A key aspect to note is the need to design all experiments with sufficient experimental capacity to detect significant effects. [source] How well does a telephone questionnaire measure drinking water intake?AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, Issue 6 2000Brent Robertson Background:Few studies have assessed the validity or reliability of drinking water intake estimations. In studies investigating potential waterborne disease, this is very important. Methods:We carried out a validity and reliability study to evaluate water intake estimations. The validity part of the study compared a telephone questionnaire to a diary. The reliability part of the study compared two telephone questionnaires. Results:253 participants were recruited. The most commonly consumed water intake categories were plain and boiled tap water. For persons aged less than 12 years, the median volume of plain water consumption was 2.9 glasses/day according to the diary. For persons aged 12 years and over, the median volume of plain water consumption was 3.0 glasses/day and for boiled water 3.0 glasses/day according to the diary. There was negligible systematic over or under reporting by participants for the telephone questionnaire in comparison to the diary and for the comparison of both telephone questionnaires. Water intake estimates were converted to categorical variables and the per cent agreement and weighted kappa statistics were calculated. For both the validity and reliability parts of the study the per cent agreement was 57,78% and the weighted kappa was 0.57,0.81. Conclusion:Water intake estimates show only moderate levels of validity and reliability when using a telephone questionnaire in comparison to a diary. Implications:Investigators of potential waterborne disease or nutritional research should exercise some caution in drawing conclusions from minor differences in drinking water intake that are obtained from a telephone questionnaire. [source] The construction of web database server-client system for functional food factorsBIOFACTORS, Issue 1-4 2004Xing-Gang Zhuo Abstract In food, other than known nutrients, such as lipid, carbohydrate, protein, vitamins, and minerals, many substances with physiological function and medicinal action exist, and it is contributing to healthy improvement and/or prevention of illness. Although carotenoid, flavonoid and polyphenol, terpenoid, volatile substance and sulfur compounds, peptide, etc. have the function of illness prevention, and research of those non-nutrient functional food factors (FFF) became globally active, the research of this field is not yet done systematically. We evaluate function of FFF and reappraise known knowledge, and this knowledge is standardized and accumulated, aimed at building a web database server-client system which is easy to use for the people and nutritional research. We also collected related data such as chemical characters of FFF from literatures and other source, and formatted them into the database. We constructed the web database server-client system with MySQL database server and Apache web server based on Linux, and used Tomcat JSP engine for data connecting since they were reliable in stability and speed. We are opening the database at http://www.life-science.jp/FFF for test now. [source] |