High humidity present in bathrooms and kitchens could be degrading the vitamins and health supplements stored in those rooms, even if the lids are on tight, a Purdue University study shows.

Lisa Mauer, an associate professor of food science, said that crystalline substances – including vitamin C, some vitamin B forms and other dietary supplements – are prone to a process called deliquescence, in which humidity causes a water-soluble solid to dissolve. Keeping those supplements away from warm, humid environments can help ensure their effectiveness.

“You might see salt or sugar start to cake in the summer, start to form clumps, and that’s a sign of deliquescence,” said Mauer, whose findings were published in the early online version of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. “You can also get chemical instabilities, which are a little more problematic if you’re consuming a dietary supplement with vitamin C for that vitamin C content.”

Kitchen salt, sugar and powdered drink mixes commonly cake, Mauer said, making their measurement more difficult but not rendering them useless. Chemical changes become more than a nuisance in vitamins and dietary supplements, however.

“If you get some moisture present or ingredients dissolve, they’ll decrease the quality and shelf life of the product and decrease the nutrient delivery,” Mauer said. “You can get complete loss of the ingredients. It depends on the conditions. It depends on the formulations. Within a very short time – in a week – you can get complete loss of vitamin C in some products that have deliquesced.”

Bathrooms and kitchens can increase the detrimental effects because of spikes in humidity in those rooms. And Mauer said storing vitamins or supplements in containers with lids doesn’t always help.

“Opening and closing a package will change the atmosphere in it. If you open and close a package in a bathroom, you add a little bit of humidity and moisture each time,” Mauer said. “The humidity in your kitchen or bathroom can cycle up quite high, depending on how long of a shower you take, for example, and can get higher than 98 percent.”

Mauer used a gravimetric moisture sorption balance to determine the humidities at which substances would deliquesce. The samples spiked in weight at the deliquescence point because moisture was being adsorbed, meaning humidity was condensing on the solid and then the solid dissolved.

Different crystalline substances deliquesce at different humidities, Mauer said. For example, at room temperature, sodium ascorbate would deliquesce at 86 percent humidity, ascorbic acid at 98 percent humidity and fructose at 62 percent. Some ingredient blends deliquesce in as low as 30 percent humidity. Different forms of ingredients, such as the two forms of vitamin C studied (ascorbic acid and sodium ascorbate), have different deliquescence points, different sensitivity to moisture and different degradation rates. At high enough humidities, samples dissolved completely.

Once humidity or temperature is brought back down, the product will solidify, Mauer said, but the damage has been done.

“Any chemical changes or degradation that have occurred before resolidification don’t reverse. You don’t regain a vitamin C content after the product resolidifies or is moved to a lower humidity,” she said. “The chemical changes we’ve observed are not reversible.”

This information could be important to anyone using vitamin-containing products, ranging from the consumer to the food and dietary supplement industry and ingredient suppliers. Storing products in dry conditions, below their deliquescence relative humidities, can avoid unwanted ingredient loss.

Consumers could notice liquid in vitamin containers, but Mauer said another sign of nutrient degradation is brown spots, especially on children’s vitamins. Mauer suggested discarding any dietary supplement that is showing signs of moisture uptake or browning.

“They’re not necessarily unsafe, but why give a vitamin to a kid if it doesn’t have the vitamin content you’re hoping to give them?” Mauer said. “You’re just giving them candy at that point with a high sugar content.”

A daily dose of vitamin D may just be what Chicagoans need to get through the long winter, according to researchers at Loyola University Chicago Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing (MNSON). This nutrient lifts mood during cold weather months when days are short and more time is spent indoors.

“Vitamin D deficiency continues to be a problem despite the nutrient’s widely reported health benefits,” said Sue Penckofer, PhD, RN, professor, MNSON. “Chicago winters compound this issue when more people spend time away from sunlight, which is a natural source of vitamin D.”

Diet alone may not be sufficient to manage vitamin D levels. A combination of adequate dietary intake of vitamin D, exposure to sunlight, and treatment with vitamin D2 or D3 supplements can decrease the risk of certain health concerns. The preferred range in the body is 30 – 60 ng/mL of 25(OH) vitamin D.

Loyola faculty members plan to take vitamin D research a step further by evaluating whether weekly vitamin D supplements improve blood sugar control and mood in women with diabetes. Depression is associated with increased insulin resistance, so people with diabetes have a greater risk for the disease than those without depression. Women also tend to have greater rates of depression and poorer blood sugar control than men with diabetes.

“There is evidence to suggest that vitamin D supplementation may decrease insulin resistance,” said Dr. Penckofer. “If we can stabilize insulin levels, we may be able to simply and cost effectively improve blood sugar control and reduce symptoms of depression for these women.”

Loyola is currently enrolling women in this clinical trial. In order to enter the study, they must be 18 to 70 years of age, have stable type 2 diabetes, signs of depression and no other major medical illness. Eighty women with type 2 diabetes and signs of depression will be given a weekly dose of vitamin D (50,000 IU) for a period of six months. Study participants will be evaluated at three points during this time.

“Vitamin D has widespread benefits for our health and certain chronic diseases in particular,” Dr. Penckofer said. “Our research may shed greater light on the role this nutrient plays in managing two conditions that impact millions of Americans. If proven to be successful, vitamin D may an important addition to care for diabetes and depression.”

New research has identified four aspects of immune system disturbance which lead to the development of coeliac disease. Nearly 40 different inherited risk factors which predispose to the disease have now been identified. These latest findings could speed the way towards improved diagnostics and treatments for the autoimmune complaint that affects 1 in 100 of the population, and lead to insights into related conditions such as type 1 diabetes.

David van Heel, Professor of Gastrointestinal Genetics at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry has led an international team of researchers towards the discovery. Results of their research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, and supported by the patient charity Coeliac UK, are published online in Nature Genetics on 28 Feb 2010.

Professor van Heel, commenting on the latest findings said: “We can now shed light on some of the precise immune disturbances leading to coeliac disease. These include how T cells in the body react to toxic wheat proteins, how the thymus gland eliminates these T cells during infancy, and the body’s response to viral infections. We now understand that many of these genetic risk factors work by altering the amounts of these immune system genes that cells make. The data also suggests that coeliac disease is made up of hundreds of genetic risk factors, we can have a good guess at nearly half of the genetic risk at present.”

The study also shows that there is substantial evidence to indicate a shared risk between the gene associated with coeliac disease and many other common chronic immune mediated diseases. Previously Professor van Heel had identified an overlap between coeliac disease and type 1 diabetes risk regions, as well as coeliac disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

Coeliac disease is common in the West, affecting around one per cent of the population. It is an auto-immune disease triggered by an intolerance to gluten (a protein found in foods containing wheat, barley and rye) that prevents normal absorption of nutrients. If undetected it can lead to severe health problems including anaemia, poor bone health, fatigue and weight loss.

Why does an apple a day keep the doctor away? New research published in the open access journal BMC Microbiology contributes to our understanding of why eating apples is good for you.

Microbiologists from the National Food Institute at the University of Denmark fed rats on a diet that was rich in whole apples, apple juice, purée or pomace, or put them on a control diet. They then analysed the microbial content of the rats’ digestive systems to see if eating apples had any impact on the numbers of presumed ‘friendly’ bacteria in the gut. “Certain bacteria are believed to be beneficial for digestive health and may influence the risk for cancer. We faced a well-known problem though – many types of bacteria cannot be easily cultured in the lab”, said research leader Professor Tine Rask Licht. The team therefore used genetics instead of culture techniques to examine the microbiology of the intestines. 16S rRNA is a molecule that is only found in bacteria and its make up is unique to each species or strain. “By working out the sequences of 16S rRNA molecules in the rats’ intestines and matching these to known bacterial profiles of 16S rRNA, we could determine which microorganisms were abundant in each group of rats”, explained Licht.

So what was the verdict? “In our study we found that rats eating a diet high in pectin, a component of dietary fiber in apples, had increased amounts of certain bacteria that may improve intestinal health”, said co-researcher Andrea Wilcks. “It seems that when apples are eaten regularly and over a prolonged period of time, these bacteria help produce short-chain fatty acids that provide ideal pH conditions for ensuring a beneficial balance of microorganisms. They also produce a chemical called butyrate, which is an important fuel for the cells of the intestinal wall”.

Of course, further research is needed to determine whether the digestive system of humans responds to apples in the same way as rats, but these findings certainly suggest that Europe’s favourite fruit has a well-deserved place in our 5-a-day.

A randomised controlled trial of fish oil given intravenously to patients in intensive care has found that it improves gas exchange, reduces inflammatory chemicals and results in a shorter length of hospital stay. Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Critical Care investigated the effects of including fish oil in the normal nutrient solution for patients with sepsis, finding a significant series of benefits.

Philip Calder, from the University of Southampton, UK, worked with a team of researchers to carry out the study in 23 patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome or sepsis in the Hospital Padre Américo, Portugal. He said, “Recently there has been increased interest in the fat and oil component of vein-delivered nutrition, with the realization that it not only supplies energy and essential building blocks, but may also provide bioactive fatty acids. Traditional solutions use soybean oil, which does not contain the omega-3 fatty acids contained in fish oil that act to reduce inflammatory responses. In fact, soybean oil is rich in omega-6 acids that may actually promote inflammation in an excessive or unbalanced supply”.

Calder and his colleagues found that the 13 patients in the fish oil group had lower levels of inflammatory agents in their blood, were able to achieve better lung function and left hospital earlier than the 10 patients who received traditional nutrition. According to Calder, “This is the first study of this particular fish oil solution in septic patients in the ICU. The positive results are important since they indicate that the use of such an emulsion in this group of patients will improve clinical outcomes, in comparison with the standard mix”.

A new study from Zambia suggests that halting breastfeeding early causes more harm than good for children not infected with HIV who are born to HIV-positive mothers. Stopping breastfeeding before 18 months was associated with significant increases in mortality among these children, according to the study’s findings, described in the Feb. 1, 2010 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, and available online now.

The researchers’ initial hypothesis, which proved to be incorrect, suggested that by 4 months of age, children would have passed the critical developmental point when breastfeeding is essential to their survival. However, stopping breastfeeding at 4 months, compared to usual breastfeeding as the child reaches 6 months to 24 months or older, did not decrease mortality or play a significant role in protecting the child from HIV transmission.

These findings were consistent with those for mothers not infected with HIV; longer breastfeeding is necessary to protect children against potentially fatal infectious diseases, especially those prevalent in low-resource settings. To prevent postnatal HIV transmission, however, mothers with HIV should be on antiretroviral drugs.

“Our results help support the recent change in the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission,” said study author Louise Kuhn, PhD, of Columbia University in New York City. “The new guidelines encourage postnatal use of antiretrovirals through the duration of breastfeeding to prevent vertical [mother-to-child] transmission.”

Young Swedish men are consuming at least double the recommended amount of salt according to a study carried out by the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

“It’s alarming that young Swedish men are consuming so much salt, and something needs to be done about it. We can really only speculate on the consequences of such a high salt intake later on in life, in the form of cardiovascular diseases and stroke,” says Lena Hulthén, Professor in Clinical Nutrition at the Sahlgrenska Academy.

The study included almost a hundred men in their twenties. Urine samples from all participants were analysed over a 24-hour period. The participants also answered questions about their eating habits. The urine samples showed that the young men were consuming at least two times the World Health Organisation’s recommended daily intake of six grams.

“High salt intake can lead to high blood pressure, but we couldn’t detect any connection in our study. High blood pressure doesn’t usually develop until a person is in their 30s or 40s, since the kidneys’ ability to deal with the excess salt deteriorates with age,” says Lena Hulthén.

Salt in food is found largely in ready meals such as pizza and frozen meat hash, but it is also in bread, cheese, meat sandwich fillings, fish products, breakfast cereals and other products produced by the food industry. An earlier Danish study has shown that only a tenth of the salt that we consume comes from our own salt cellars.

“The food industry needs clear regulations on how much salt it is allowed to use if we want to reduce total salt intake. One solution could be to follow Finland’s example, where all food packaging has to clearly state the salt content to make it easier for the consumer to select products containing less salt,” says Lena Hulthén.

Salt in food

People who consume a lot of salt run a greater risk of developing high blood pressure, which in turn is one of the key causes of heart problems and stroke. The National Food Administration (Livsmedelsverket) recommends that Swedish women consume no more than six grams of salt a day, and Swedish men no more than seven grams, but the authority would ideally like to see us consuming between five and six grams a day. The National Food Administration would also like to see children consuming less salt.

Mango. If you know little about this fruit, understand this: It’s been found to prevent or stop certain colon and breast cancer cells in the lab.

That’s according to a new study by Texas AgriLife Research food scientists, who examined the five varieties most common in the U.S.: Kent, Francine, Ataulfo, Tommy/Atkins and Haden.

Though the mango is an ancient fruit heavily consumed in many parts of the world, little has been known about its health aspects. The National Mango Board commissioned a variety of studies with several U.S. researchers to help determine its nutritional value.

“If you look at what people currently perceive as a superfood, people think of high antioxidant capacity, and mango is not quite there,” said Dr. Susanne Talcott, who with her husband, Dr. Steve Talcott, conducted the study on cancer cells. “In comparison with antioxidants in blueberry, acai and pomegranate, it’s not even close.”

But the team checked mango against cancer cells anyway, and found it prevented or stopped cancer growth in certain breast and colon cell lines, Susanne Talcott noted.

“It has about four to five times less antioxidant capacity than an average wine grape, and it still holds up fairly well in anticancer activity. If you look at it from the physiological and nutritional standpoint, taking everything together, it would be a high-ranking super food,” she said. “It would be good to include mangoes as part of the regular diet.”

The Talcotts tested mango polyphenol extracts in vitro on colon, breast, lung, leukemia and prostate cancers. Polyphenols are natural substances in plants and are associated with a variety of compounds known to promote good health.

Mango showed some impact on lung, leukemia and prostate cancers but was most effective on the most common breast and colon cancers.

“What we found is that not all cell lines are sensitive to the same extent to an anticancer agent,” she said. “But the breast and colon cancer lines underwent apotosis, or programmed cell death. Additionally, we found that when we tested normal colon cells side by side with the colon cancer cells, that the mango polyphenolics did not harm the normal cells.”

The duo did further tests on the colon cancer lines because a mango contains both small molecules that are readily absorbed and larger molecules that would not be absorbed and thus remain present in a colon.

“We found the normal cells weren’t killed, so mango is not expected to be damaging in the body,” she said. “That is a general observation for any natural agent, that they target cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone, in reasonable concentrations at least.”

The Talcotts evaluated polyphenolics, and more specifically gallotannins as being the class of bioactive compounds (responsible for preventing or stopping cancer cells). Tannins are polyphenols that are often bitter or drying and found in such common foods as grape seed, wine and tea.

The study found that the cell cycle, which is the division cells go through, was interrupted. This is crucial information, Suzanne Talcott said, because it indicates a possible mechanism for how the cancer cells are prevented or stopped.

“For cells that may be on the verge of mutating or being damaged, mango polyphenolics prevent this kind of damage,” she said.

The Talcotts hope to do a small clinical trial with individuals who have increased inflamation in their intestines with a higher risk for cancer.

“From there, if there is any proven efficacy, then we would do a larger trial to see if there is any clinical relevance,” she said.

Recent research backs up University of Leicester campaign to promote healthy eating amongst students

A survey of eating habits among first year self-catering students showed that university lifestyle tends to lead to an increased consumption of fast foods.

This was more noticeable amongst male students, who confessed to thinking of cooking as ‘women’s work’ and were more likely to eat fast food than their female counterparts, while female students were more likely to be influenced by worries about weight gain and appearance.

The study, carried out by student Hannah Cooper under the supervision of Dr Ellen Annandale at the University of Leicester Department of Sociology, also indicated that students’ fast food consumption increased when they left home and began to cater for themselves, in spite of the known link between fast food consumption and obesity.

Convenience, peer pressure and budget appear to be the main reasons for their eating habits, while the gender difference is widened by a male culture of greater alcohol consumption though males also played more sport.

Another factor in students’ choice of fast foods was quite simply that they liked it. Pizza proved to be favourite, followed by pasta, curry and French fries.

While the students studied felt that living among new people had not influenced their eating habits, nevertheless peer pressure played a major role in decisions about when and what to eat and whether or not to cook for themselves.

Hannah Cooper commented: “Students might be tired and not feel like cooking. Fast food marketing makes it very accessible, and if several students combine to order fast food together then it becomes an even cheaper option.

“At home their parents probably provided their meals. They come to university and have to start managing and budgeting for themselves. They didn’t seem to have the knowledge of how to manage money in relation to food, and fast food was sometimes seen as cheaper than cooking.

“They knew that fast food was less healthy than home cooked food, but that knowledge wasn’t strong enough to override their lifestyle. Peer pressure can be very strong. One male student reported that when he ordered a salad at a pub his friends jeered at him.”

The Department of Health has linked fast food consumption to the growing rise in the nation’s obesity, yet one problem may be that eating unhealthily when young may not lead to obesity and health problems until later in life.

Of the sample consulted by Hannah Cooper, while 59% admitted their eating habits had changed for the worse, only 29% felt their weight had increased since becoming students, and these tended to be those who did less exercise and drank more alcohol.

The University of Leicester is developing strategies to combat students’ reliance on fast foods. Frances Stone from the Residential and Catering Services commented: “I found Hannah’s report very informative, giving support to our assumption based on anecdotal evidence. We encourage students to eat healthily and do hold regular Healthy Living weeks in residences. We support the studentcooking.tv, which is a lively, informative and stylish Internet-based video service that shows students how to cook great tasting meals on a budget.

“We have also arranged for a Student Survival Guide to be distributed to all students communal areas. This extensive guide gives students advice on healthy eating, shopping starter kits and techniques and equipment. It covers areas such as brain boosting breakfasts, energising lunches and simple budget beating meals. The guide concentrates on what students should be including in their diet.

“We look forward to continuing our work to help students find their way around the healthy living agenda”

Hannah Cooper is now taking her research further with a MSc in Social Research at the University of Leicester. “I would like to make a difference,” she said. “I think policies designed to improve the dietary behaviour of students should be tailored by gender and specific attention paid to the body dissatisfaction reported by females.

“My findings showed males as more likely to view work surrounding food as a female task. This may be due to the lack of socialisation they receive at home. Maybe intervention into the prevention of obesity in later life should start earlier for males and be undertaken in the home to produce the most beneficial results.”

Dr Annandale commented: “It isn’t just a question of knowledge, as many students are aware of what constitutes a healthy diet. It is the social context in which students live that pushes them towards a lifestyle that might be unhealthy.”

Drinking green tea could modulate the effect of smoking on lung cancer. Results of this hospital-based, randomized study conducted in Taiwan were presented at the AACR-IASLC Joint Conference on Molecular Origins of Lung Cancer, held here from Jan. 11-14, 2010.

“Lung cancer is the leading cause of all cancer deaths in Taiwan,” said I-Hsin Lin, M.S., a student at Chung Shan Medical University in Taiwan. “Tea, particularly green tea, has received a great deal of attention because tea polyphenols are strong antioxidants, and tea preparations have shown inhibitory activity against tumorigenesis.”

However, previous studies of green tea have been inhibited by the flaws of the epidemiologic model with its inherent biases.

Lin and colleagues enrolled 170 patients with lung cancer and 340 healthy patients as controls. The researchers administered questionnaires to obtain demographic characteristics, cigarette smoking habits, green tea consumption, dietary intake of fruits and vegetables, cooking practices and family history of lung cancer. They also performed genotyping on insulin-like growth factors as polymorphisms on the following insulin-like growth factors: IGF1, IGF2 and IGFBP3, which have all been reported to be associated with cancer risk.

Among smokers and non-smokers, those who did not drink green tea had a 5.16-fold increased risk of lung cancer compared with those who drank at least one cup of green tea per day. Among smokers, those who did not drink green tea at all had a 12.71-fold increased risk of lung cancer compared with those who drank at least one cup of green tea per day.

Lin and colleagues suspect genetics may play a role in this risk differential. Green tea drinkers with non-susceptible IGF1 (CA)19/(CA)19 and (CA)19/X genotypes reported a 66 percent reduction in lung cancer risk as compared with green tea drinkers carrying the IGF1 X/X genotype.

Heavy smokers carrying susceptible IGF1, IGF2 and IGFBP3 genotypes also had a higher risk of lung cancer compared with nonsmokers carrying non-susceptible IGF1, IGF2 and IGFBP3 genotypes.

“Our study may represent a clue that in the case of lung cancer, smoking-induced carcinogenesis could be modulated by green tea consumption and the growth factor environment,” said Lin.