Current Nutrition & Food Science - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2007

The second year of Current Nutrition & Food Science has been completed after the publication of 4 issues in 2006, with a total number of 36 manuscripts. One issue per trimester will be the standard publication procedure for the following years. We are very happy and thankful for the support received from our Editorial Advisory Board members as well as from many other scientists who showed profound interest in our journal, either by submitting manuscripts for publication or by collaborating in the review of submitted manuscripts, a very important and essential task to guarantee the high scientific quality of the journal. I also wish to thank Miss Samreen Laeeq, the Manager Publications, for the great job she is doing. CNF is getting consolidated and we will work hard to have high scientific excellence in the published manuscripts and thus a high scientific impact in the area. Current Nutrition & Food Science has published in 2006 a good number of reviews on topics of interest in nutrition and food science. Some of the most interesting published reviews have dealt with supplemented infant formulas, the role of fats in hypertension, obesity and insulin resistance; insulin treatment for diabetes type 2; osteoporosis prevention by different foods; leptin and obesity; overweight, chronic liver disease and Crohn's disease in children; adipose tissue and secretion of bioactive molecules; the impact of probiotics on the immune system, infections and aging; propionate and food intake control; the role of different nutrients like vitamin D, fructooligosaccharides of edible allium, pentacyclic triterpenes from olive oil, iron as a fortificant in whole-wheat flour, cyclodextrins, taurine and selenium; dietary fibres and its physiological effects in the colon; Mediterranean diet and health status and nutrition communication. Current Nutrition & Food Science will publish a total of 4 issues in 2007 and, as a novelty, two special issues dealing with specific matters will be included. Prof. Luc Tappy is acting as guest editor for the first special issue that will be published in May. This issue will be entitled “Dietary determinants of the metabolic syndrome” and will cover the matter with 7 manuscripts written by well recognized international experts. Prof. Alessandro Laviano is acting as guest editor for the second special issue that will be published in November. This issue will be entitled “Oxidative stress and diseases: a relevant pathogenic mechanism and a promising therapeutic target“ and will include 6 manuscripts that are being prepared by well known international experts. At this moment, Current Nutrition & Food Science is already indexed in Chemical Abstracts, EMBASE, Scopus, and EMNursing and is now under review process for its inclusion in important databases like PubMed, Medline and ISI. The inclusion in these important databases will facilitate its diffusion as well as the search of its published articles by any interested scientist. Current Nutrition & Food Science provides reviews on different topics of interest in nutrition and food science, aiming to provide an updated state-of-the-art and latest novelties on each focused topic. Our final objective is the dissemination of updated and rigorous scientific information on nutrition and food science and making them available to all interested scientists and technical staff in academia, research centres, hospitals, nutrition and diet services, food and pharmaceutical industry and regulatory agencies.

Over the past five years, significant new evidence has documented the link between eating breakfast and learning. Recent studies show that skipping breakfast is relatively common among children in the U.S. and other industrialized nations and is associated with quantifiable negative consequences for academic, cognitive, health, and mental health functioning. When combined with new data on the prevalence and impact of hunger/food insecurity, the preponderance of recent evidence is that lack of optimal nutrition is a problem for millions of U.S. students and that increased breakfast eating could be part of a solution. Literature reviews published in the late 1990's set the stage for understanding this new evidence by showing the associations between regular breakfast consumption/skipping and student outcomes. Research over the past five years has provided new evidence for these associations and definitive evidence for others: most notably that universally free school breakfast programs increase the rate of overall-breakfast eating and are judged to improve learning by teachers and school principals. These findings, along with accumulating evidence for the danger of nutritional risks, provide a clear rationale for continued efforts to promote breakfast eating for children, schools, and the nation as a whole.

Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) commonly present both anorexia (defined as reduced apetite) and a catabolic state leading to loss of protein from skeletal muscle and other tissues. Additionally, these patients carry an inflammatory burden, which may play a pivotal role in the evolution of not only the observed cachexia, but also in the massive increase in relative risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in this population. Evidence suggests that a facilitative interaction between pro-inflammatory cytokines and other factors, including central nervous system regulation of appetite, co-morbidies, acidosis, anaemia and hormonal derangements combine to produce both anorexia and cachexia in this patient group. So far, interventional therapies have failed to significantly alleviate the cachexic state in ESRD, presumably because of the need to attack other causative factors. Therefore, new treatment strategies such as multiple appetite stimulants, various “anti-inflammatory diets” and new potentially useful anti-inflammatory pharmacological agents should be tested alone or in combination to evaluate if these new therapeutic modalities could improve the poor outcome of ESRD patients. As the etiology of cachexia in ESRD is multifactorial, we propose that its treatment should comprise a number of concomitant therapies to provide an integrated strategy aiming to reverse this devastating complication.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is one of the most important public health challenges in the world. Its increasing prevalence in many countries and the difficult metabolic control of patients with type 2 DM justify the study of strategies for primary prevention. The present review describes evidence from epidemiologic studies and clinical trials regarding recommendations for dietary prevention of type 2 DM. Prospective epidemiologic studies have provided support for a role of individual dietary components in determining the development of DM independent of obesity and other lifestyle factors. Several prevention trials have demonstrated that intensive diet and lifestyle interventions substantially reduced risk of type 2 DM in high risk populations. Recent evidence suggests that less-intensive nutritional counseling and lifestyle programs are also effective in reducing diabetes risk factors at the primary health care settings.

The prevalence of pediatric overweight has increased dramatically over the past three decades, likely due to changes in food intake as well as physical activity. Therefore, information examining eating patterns among children and adolescents is needed to illuminate which aspects of eating behavior require modification to prevent and treat pediatric overweight. Because child self-report and parent-report of children's eating habits are often inconsistent and limited by recall and other biases, laboratory-based studies in which food intake is observed and monitored have increased in number. Such studies offer objective and controlled methods of measuring and describing eating behaviors. However, to our knowledge, no publication exists that consolidates, reviews, and provides critical commentary on the literature to date in pediatric samples. In this paper, we review the literature of studies utilizing laboratory methods to examine eating behavior in samples ranging from birth through adolescence. Our review includes all relevant articles retrieved from the PubMed and PsychInfo search engines. Specifically, we examine meal-feeding studies conducted during the various developmental stages (infancy, preschool, middle childhood, and adolescence), with a focus on methodology. Included in our review are feeding studies related to dietary regulation, exposure and preference, as well as paradigms examining disordered eating patterns and their relationship to body composition. We have structured this review so that both consistent and inconsistent findings are presented by age group, and innovative methods of assessment are discussed in more detail. Following each section, we summarize findings and draw potential conclusions from the available data. We then discuss clinical implications of the research data and suggest directions for the next generation of studies of feeding behavior in children.

The WHO has declared that obesity is one of the top five risk conditions in the world. Body adiposity occurs as a consequence of an imbalance between food intake and energy expenditure. The hypothalamus integrates complex neural and humoral signals that coordinate the initiation and termination of feeding and regulates energy expenditure. In the last decade there has been considerable interest in the role of gut hormones in governing hunger and satiety signals in the brain. Ghrelin, a small peptide synthesized in the stomach, stimulates food intake while peptide YY (PYY), oxyntomodulin (OXM), glucagon like peptide-1 (GLP-1), cholecystokinin (CCK) and pancreatic polypeptide (PP) inhibit appetite To date, pharmacological approaches used to alter gut hormones administration may provide physiological and therapeutic solutions for appetite control and long-term anti-obesity therapy. Here we review the recent advances in this field.

Ever-growing consumer demand for convenience, combined with a healthy diet and preference for natural ingredients has led to a growth in functional beverage markets. Current trends and changing consumer needs indicate a great opportunity for innovations and developments in fermented milks. Scientific and clinical evidence is also mounting to corroborate the consumer perception of health from fermented milks. Probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics and associated ingredients also add an attractive dimension to cultured dairy products. Also, owing to expanding market share and size of dairy companies, there has been a reduction of clearly structured markets i.e. merging of dairy products and fruit beverage markets with introduction of ‘juiceceuticals’ like fruit-yogurt beverages that are typical example of hybrid dairy products offering health, flavour and convenience. Another potential growth area for fermented milks includes added-value products such as low calorie, reduced-fat varieties and those fortified with physiologically active ingredients including fibers, phytosterols, omega-3-fatty acids, whey based ingredients, antioxidant vitamins, isoflavones that provide specific health benefits beyond basic nutrition. World over efforts have been devoted to develop fermented milks containing certain nonconventional food sources like soybeans and millets and convert them to more acceptable and palatable form thus producing low cost, nutritious fermented foods especially for developing and underdeveloped nations where malnutrition exists. Furthermore, use of biopreservatives and certain innovative technologies like membrane processing, high pressure processing and carbonation lead to milk fermentation under predictable, controllable and precise conditions to yield hygienic fermented milks of high nutritive value.