Paul A. Lachance

Rationale and technology of food fortification with vitamins, minerals, and amino acids

A variety of viewpoints in establishing a fortification rationale for specific foods is presented. The stability and technology of adding vitamins, minerals, and amino acids to foods is reviewed based on published and unpublished material.

Effects of Food Preparation Procedures in Nutrient Retention with Emphasis on Foodservice Practices

Foodservice is a misnomer. In the classic sense, away-from-home eating provided by public eating establishments and institutions, such as at medical facilities, schools, and colleges, are understood to comprise the foodservice market. However, the food industry has evolved preprepared single-serve food items to meet individual foodservice needs, be it at home or away from home, and has continued to provide preprepared bulk food items for foodservice use. More people than ever before are now dependent upon the nutritive quality of foods preprepared at the manufacturing level. Both the foodservice operator and the consumer obtain their food variety needs to various degrees via the preprepared frozen entrees and other single-serving food items. Meals prepared from “scratch,” utilizing fresh (and sometimes frozen) foods and other ingredients (milk, flour, and spices), are available at select restaurants and occasionally at home. However, the life-style of the burgeoning single-member and small-family household has created markets for ready foods from preprepared infant formulas (wherein assuring nutritive value has been extensively researched and applied), to nursery school and other preschool, especially day-care, snacks and meals, to elementary and secondary school U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-prescribed and a la carte meals, vending machine foods, and fast-food snacks and meals, to entrees, such as pizza or stromboli, delivered to the college dormitory room, to the home, or eaten on site.

Reinvention of the food guide pyramid to promote health

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the reinvention of the food guide pyramid to promote health. Dietary guidelines and dietary food guides are tools used to educate the public about diet, nutrition, and health. The quality of an individuals nutritional status is directly dependent on the quality of the input into nutrition—namely, food and applicable dietary supplements. The chapter fosters and makes a more consumer relevant food-guide-pyramid approach to food selections and combinations aimed at enhancing the nutrition and health of the consumer. Internationally, food guides come in three major shapes: circular plate, oriental pagoda, and pyramid. The chapter focuses on the pyramid approach as a food guide because it serves well as a model system. A major drawback of the pyramid is that they do not distinguish caloric differences or nutrient densities of the various foods within each grouping. The consumer is seeking solutions to the dilemma of body weight control via shifting the macronutrient composition of their daily diet. Major changes in the pyramid need to occur: (1) the base (foundation) of the pyramid must be changed to foster the meal-by-meal selection and ingestion of vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and fruits and (2) the cereal grain category needs to be acknowledged for its whole grains, for which there is scientific evidence of health benefits.

Faster and easier methods for quantitative lipid extraction and fractionation from miniature samples of animal tissues

A less time-consuming dry-column method for total lipid extraction from tissue samples was scaled down and modified to permit the evaluation of 1-g samples of liver and muscle tissues from rats and from obese (ob/ob) and lean mice. Lipid yields obtained by the new dry-column method compared well with those obtained by the widely accepted traditional chloroform/methanol method. For subsequent separation of neutral and polar lipid classes, a solid-phase fractionation method was developed. Its performance was verified by thin-layer chromatogrphy. Both column chromatographic methods were found to be especially convenient when running multiple samples simultaneously.

Decreased triiodothyronine binding to isolated nuclei from livers of preobese and obese (ob/ob) mice.

Abstract L-Triiodothyronine (T3) binding to hepatic nuclei from (ob/ob) mice at different ages was examined and compared with that of lean controls. Results showed a significant reduction in T3 binding in liver nuclei of obese mice at all ages studied. The preobese mice at 2 weeks of age had 27.9% fewer receptor sites/mg DNA compared to lean controls, receptor concentration further decreased to 67.7% at 18 weeks of age. Data presented here demonstrates that the impaired triiodothyronine (T3) binding to hepatic nuclei present in older (ob/ob) obese mice is an antecedent to the obesity. This report also helps to explain the poor thermoregulation and low oxygen consumption present during the preobese phase of the postnatal development of these animals.

Locomotor activity of rats housed in novel activity cages: Effects of vitamin B-6 and temperature

Abstract An apparatus for measuring locomotor activity (LA) of rats is described and demonstrated. Conventional cages were modified to tilt in response to animal LA. Cage movements were detected by a piezoelectric crystal transducer, and the amplified signals outputted to electronic digital counters. The activity cages were utilized to investigate the effects of several dietary levels of vitamin B-6 (0, 0.5, 1.0, and 6.0 mg pyridoxine-HCl/kg diet) and two different temperature conditions (23° and 27°) on the LA of post-weanling rats. Throughout most of the 31/2 week study period, animals in the 0 and 0.5 mg groups were less active (p

Preliminary comparative nuclear T3 receptor binding characteristics in liver and skeletal muscle of the obese mouse and Zucker fatty rat

Abstract L-Triiodothyronine (T 3 ) binding to isolated nuclei from liver and skeletal muscle of the (ob/ob) mouse and the Zucker rat were examined (obse vs. lean). Present data confirm the earlier report of Guersney and Morishige showing reduced T 3 binding to hepatic nuclei from ob/ob mice. In Zucker rats, however, only 50% of animals indicate the possibility of a difference in hepatic nuclear T 3 receptor concentration between obese and lean. Preliminary results also show a trend for the T 3 receptor concentration to be lower in skeletal muscle nuclei of both (ob/ob) mice and the Zucker rats. Disassociation constant (K d ) for the receptor was similar in all tissues examined, suggesting a single population of receptors.

Vitamin a action on hepatic cholesterol biosynthesis

Abstract Vitamin A action on hepatic cholesterol biosynthesis in the rat animal model is nonconsistent and complex. Not only does Vitamin A enhance and depress cholesterol synthesis but the action of this nutrient is influenced by several factors such as: vitamin A status of the animal; form of vitamin A used; vitamin A metabolites; animal feeding regimen; substrate flux; and supernatant protein factors.

Decreased hindlimb skeletal muscle weight and nuclear T3 receptor binding of obese (ob/ob) mice

Abstract Hindlimb muscle weights and binding of L-triiodothyronine (T 3 ) to isolated nuclei of hindlimb skeletal muscle were investigated in obese (ob/ob) and lean mice. At 12 weeks of age, although weighing substantially more, obese mice had only 55% as much muscle mass as their lean littermates. There was no phenotype effect observed for the equilibrium dissociation constant (Kd). However the apparent binding capacity (Bmax) was significantly less (P 3 receptor concentration in skeletal muscle nuclei of obese mice.

THE U.S. SCHOOL FOOD SERVICE PROGRAM—SUCCESSES, FAILURES AND PROSPECTS

Early in this century, Robert Hunter and John Spargo * directed attention to the folly of a society assuming the responsibility of education for the young, without assuming the responsibility that the children are fit to receive that education-including the need to provide meals to children, especially those of poor families. The relationship between the economically deprived child and the educationally needy child was self-evident. For most proud and strongly individual Americans this viewpoint prevails today. We have yet to recognize that the more important relationship is between health and performance and that it transcends the issue of economic status. The fact is that all children are needy. While the economically disadvantaged are at a greater health risk, the well-to-do American does not stand out as having attained ideal health and longevity. The advantage that the affluent have is that of being able to afford better environments, thus decreasing the risks of disease exposure, as well as being able to afford more rapid, personal, and better quality medical care after illness strikes. Both the needy and the affluent have a right to programs that assure health and thwart illness. The situation in the U.S. is that we have the promulgation of health education and sound nutrition resulting from diet, but a separate promulgation of school food service-the laboratory of food experience. This is as unrealistic for the rich as for the poor.