Bruce German

The development of functional foods: lessons from the gut

Functional foods have resulted from the gradual recognition that healthy diets result from eating nutritious foods and from the identification of the mechanisms by which foods modulate metabolism and health. After initial successes with foods that reduce blood cholesterol level, probiotic bacteria and prebiotic carbohydrates have now also demonstrated added health benefits. As ingredients become more complex, the need to stabilize such ingredients in foods become increasingly important to the success of functional foods. Modern biotechnologies such as genomics, genetic expression and biomarkers of health and performance will be applied to this increasingly visible portion of human diets.

Bioinformatics and data knowledge: the new frontiers for nutrition and foods

The recent publication of the Human Genome poses the question: how will genome technologies influence food development? Food products will be very different within the decade with considerable new values added as a result of the biological and chemical data that bioinformatics is rapidly converting to usable knowledge. Bioinformatics will provide details of the molecular basis of human health. The immediate benefits of this information will be to extend our understanding of the role of food in the health and well-being of consumers. In the future, bioinformatics will impact foods at a more profound level, defining the physical, structural and biological properties of food commodities leading to new crops, processes and foods with greater quality in all aspects. Bioinformatics will improve the toxicological assessment of foods making them even safer. Eventually, bioinformatics will extend the already existing trend of personalized choice in the food marketplace to enable consumers to match their food product choices with their own personal health. To build this new knowledge and to take full advantage of these tools there is a need for a paradigm shift in assessing, collecting and sharing databases, in developing new integrative models of biological structure and function, in standardized experimental methods, in data integration and storage, and in analytical and visualization tools.

Commonly Used Drugs Impair Oral Tolerance in Mice

Abstract: Ibuprofen and antibiotics are commonly prescribed during early childhood. When given to mice at the time at which oral tolerance is induced, both treatments affect either the induction or the maintenance of oral tolerance. These results suggest that the coadministration of these and similarly acting drugs should be considered cautiously for infants at risk of allergy.

Nutrition and genomics.

The decoding of the human genome is already being heralded as one of science’s greatest achievements and is viewed as the point of departure for the next generation of life science research to understand human health and cure human disease [1]. However, genomics as a scientific endeavor is not simply the list of nucleotides in the genomes of humans and various other organisms. This new field is bringing a new knowledge base on genes, their functions and regulation. This is promoted by new, multiple and truly remarkable biomolecule-based analytical technologies that are capable of interrogating the functioning of living organisms with a breadth and depth not previously imagined. Additionally, computer-based technologies are spawning an entirely new computation discipline directed towards the mining of biological databases, termed bioinformatics. The various scientific disciplines that seek to develop cures for human diseases are already fully engaged in genomic research. Nutrition, with its goals to improve human health and prevent disease, stands to achieve tremendous advances during this post-genome era. Nutrition enjoyed conspicuous success during the first half of the 20th century, establishing all the major essential nutrients – the vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids – that are necessary for growth, development and reproduction. The diseases that are associated with a deficiency of each of these nutrients and the quantities of each nutrient necessary to prevent them have been reasonably well described using a variety of animal models and experimental strategies. As Carpenter [2] pointed out in his fascinating series on a short history of nutritional science, many have looked on the developments in the mid 20th century as the ‘golden age of nutrition’, but during the dawn of this 21st century nutrition science now faces a new set of challenges for which the knowledge, tools and strategies of the ‘omics’ will be indispensable. The challenges are not small Allison SP, Go VLW (eds): Metabolic Issues of Clinical Nutrition. Nestlé Nutrition Workshop Series Clinical & Performance Program, vol 9, pp 243–263, Nestec Ltd., Vevey/S. Karger AG, Basel,

Chicory increases acetate turnover, but not propionate and butyrate peripheral turnovers in rats.

Chicory roots are rich in inulin that is degraded into SCFA in the caecum and colon. Whole-body SCFA metabolism was investigated in rats during food deprivation and postprandial states. After 22 h of food deprivation, sixteen rats received an IV injection of radioactive 14C-labelled SCFA. The volume of distribution and the fractional clearance rate of SCFA were 0.25-0.27 litres/kg and 5.4-5.9 %/min, respectively. The half-life in the first extracellular rapidly decaying compartment was between 0.9 and 1.4 min. After 22 h of food deprivation, another seventeen rats received a primed continuous IV infusion of 13C-labelled SCFA for 2 h. Isotope enrichment (13C) of SCFA was determined in peripheral arterial blood by MS. Peripheral acetate, propionate and butyrate turnover rates were 29, 4 and 0.3 micromol/kg per min respectively. Following 4 weeks of treatment with chicory root or control diets, eighteen fed rats received a primed continuous IV infusion of 13C-labelled SCFA for 2 h. Intestinal degradation of dietary chicory lowered caecal pH, enhanced caecal and colonic weights, caecal SCFA concentrations and breath H2. The diet with chicory supplementation enhanced peripheral acetate turnover by 25 % (P = 0.017) concomitant with an increase in plasma acetate concentration. There were no changes in propionate or butyrate turnovers. In conclusion, by setting up a multi-tracer approach to simultaneously assess the turnovers of acetate, propionate and butyrate it was demonstrated that a chronic chicory-rich diet significantly increases peripheral acetate turnover but not that of propionate or butyrate in rats.