Wolfing Down Food Science

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t's summertime!  We thought it would be a great time to rebroadcast some of our most downloaded episodes.  For this one we go all the way back to the beginning.  We hope you enjoy!

Is preservative a four letter word?  We find out what preservative means to a food scientist discussing the balance of food quality with safety through preservation.  Is a compound synthesized in a lab inherently bad for our health or do those same compounds occur naturally in our foods?  From bacon preserved with celery to 25 year old canned meat, the dose makes the poison.

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It's summertime!  We thought it would be a great time to rebroadcast some of our most downloaded episodes.  We hope you enjoy!

One of the most frequent concerns consumers have are the chemicals in our food.  Today, we discuss the various types of chemicals and why they are present.  Some food ingredients have chemical BOGO (buy one get one free) properties, such as providing both flavor and preservation effects.

KEY WORDS: Additives, GRAS, Prior-Sanctioned Substances, Foods vs Supplements, Direct vs Indirect Additives, multi-Functional Ingredients, acrylamide, fortification vs enrichment

**The image here is a preservative compound called sodium benzoate.

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Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
Please take a minute to help others find our podcast by leaving a rating and comment on your podcasting app!

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It's summertime!  We thought it would be a great time to rebroadcast some of our most downloaded episodes.  We hope you enjoy!
Teresa’s tomato molded, but why?  How do molds and other spoilage microbes get to your food and spoil appearance, texture, flavor?  Turns out, they are EVERYWHERE.  In this episode, we describe the sources for spoilage microbes and how to deal with them.

Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
Please take a minute to help others find our podcast by leaving a rating and comment on your podcasting app!

Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
Please take a minute to help others find our podcast by leaving a rating and comment on your podcasting app!

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The award winning nutrition educator, Dr. Sarah Ash, Professor of Nutrition at North Carolina State University, joins us on WDFS to discuss nutrition through the years and educating  30,000 (nope that's not a typo!) nutrition professionals.  Looking at nutritional history in the US sheds light on modern day nutrition practices.  Find out why moderation is the motto for Sarah!

Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
Please take a minute to help others find our podcast by leaving a rating and comment on your podcasting app!

Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
Please take a minute to help others find our podcast by leaving a rating and comment on your podcasting app!

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Colin Kay at the Plants for Human Health Institute was a part of the team that was recently awarded a $20 million 5-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) Metabolomics and Clinical Assays Center (MCAC) award as part of the NIH Nutrition for Precision Health (NPH) initiative, within the NIH’s" All of Us" Research Program. The program aims to inform more personalized nutrition and health recommendations.

Ever have so much information coming at you that you don’t know where to start? Colin joins the WDFS team to discuss how to organize and find information to answer questions about precision nutrition and what our bodies do with all that great nutrition once it gets inside.  Find out about the metabolome and the exposome and what role they play in nutrition research that targets recommendations for specific individuals.  

Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
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Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
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AND NOW FOR A DOSE OF HUMILITY… Part 2!

We are continuing our discussion about  stuff we don’t know about nutrition!  The USDA is constantly examining nutritional research to modify their guidelines.  For the humble nutritionist part 2, we are discussing the second set of 5 topics the USDA has under way.
https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/work-under-way/view-proposed-scientific-questions

1. Foods and Beverages Together
2. Parents and Children: Diets and Development
3. Diets and Disease Prevention
4. New Foods and Diets You Can Live With
5. Food Processing

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Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
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AND NOW FOR A DOSE OF HUMILITY… Humility Contest!

We are discussing stuff we don’t know about nutrition!  The USDA is constantly examining nutritional research to modify their guidelines.  For the humble nutritionist part 1, we are discussing the first 5 topics the USDA has under way.
https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/work-under-way/view-proposed-scientific-questions

First 5 Topics Showing Humility in Nutrition

1. Meal Timing
2. Early Food Exposures
3. Sources of Saturated Fat
4. Sources of Sugar
5. Beverages

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Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
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Have you ever thought about nutrition as a series of tiered services? There’s the basic plan which includes essential nutrients (not everyone gets this basic level, eg. Vitamin D). The basic plan takes into account which nutrients our bodies make and those that they cannot. The premium plan includes those non-essential nutrients. In reality that premium plan is something we are still trying to figure out. And how about an ultra-premium plan? Does that include things like specialist doctors, nutritionists and personal trainers?

Join us as we talk about non-essential nutrients and how they are integrated into our diet and perception of nutrition.
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The basic and premium plan will be different for everyone based on age, gender, weight, disease state, injury, ethnicity, metabolic states (pregnancy, lactation)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21310306/

What is essential to your best life?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK56068/table/summarytables.t2/?report=objectonly

Defining essential, conditionally essential, conditional, in terms of nutrition vs. general understanding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient

Amino acids, vitamins we can make or get if we consume a healthy diet (non-essential AA’s; Vit K; Vit D; choline)

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Vitamine to Vitamin... we THOUGHT we had it all figured out with macronutrients.  It turns out the little things are important.  How were vitamins discovered?  Where did vitamin F go?  And what’s up with so many B vitamins?  We discuss the discovery of vitamins and examine folic acid and iodine to see the type of public health effects that fortification can have.

The discovery of vitamins

History of US Iodine fortification and supplementation

Folic acid food fortification

When it rains it pours: The Long-Run Economic Impacts of Salt Iodization in the United States 

Vitamins on Wikipedia

Goiter and beauty

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Reading ingredient labels is tough!  Today we will decipher what some of those ingredients are with respect to which macronutrient category they fit into.

Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]

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Got a questions for us?  Email us at [email protected]
Please take a minute to help others find our podcast by leaving a rating and comment on your podcasting app!