Food items

Because vegetable oils contain optimum content of tocopherols and tocotrienols for antioxidant activity, they are not usually supplemented. Fats and oils used for frying may need some more antioxidant protection and tocopherol mixtures together with citric acid, and/or pentapolyphosphate may be added. 

It is not common to add vitamin E to cereals. Restoration of vitamin E losses during heating processes, such as extrusion, roller-drying and making bread, may be feasible. In the case of cereals and cereal products, tocopherols and tocotrienols are added as vitamins and not as antioxidants. 

The trend toward multivitamin drinks has increased in developed countries. Vitamins, including vitamin E, are added to fruit-juice-based products to be used by consumers on their way toward optimal health (O Brien and Roberton, 1993). Many dieters eat yogurt as a meal replacement, and the addition of a wide range of vitamins is justified (O Brien and Robertson, 1993). 

Infant formulas are highly regulated products, because they often provide the only source of nutrients for infants. The need for fortifying infant formulas with vitamin E is evident, because they usually contain elevated levels of polyunsaturated 

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Used in baked goods (breads, cakes and cake mixes, cookies, crackers, snacks), pasta products, dairy-type products (beverage powders, coffee whiteners, whipped toppings), infant formulas, milk replacers for young animals, emulsified and coarsely ground meat items, meat analogues, hams, poultry breasts, dietary food items, and soup mixes and gravies. 

The effectiveness of antioxidants as preservatives for fats and oils is evaluated by determining the rate of peroxide development using the Active Oxygen Method (AOM) (29). The development of a rancid odor is used to evaluate the stabiUty of food items (Schaal Oven StabiUty test) (30). 

UK Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food and Flealth and Safety Executive, Annual Report of the Working Party on Pesticide Residues in Food (1997), MAFF Publications, London, 1997. lARC, Monographs on the Evabiation of the Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Hnmans Volume 56 Some Naturally Occurring Substances Food Items and Constituents, Heterocyclic Aromatic Amines and Mycotoxins, WFIO, Geneva, 1979, p. 397. 

Butylene glycol is sometimes used as a humectant (moisturizer) and preservative if the spray contains food items such as vitamins and proteins. It also helps products to retain their scents. 

A relatively uncomplicated case is the use of nitrogen fixers as food items. There is abundant archaeological evidence for the importance of pulses in the Mediterranean in Neolithic and later periods. Because pulses have 5 N values of around 0%o, the use of pulses as food stuffs should be detectable. Recently, we have measured human 5 N values in some Greek sites that indicate that a few individuals in the cemetery were almost completely dependent on pulse protein (Van Klinken and Triantaphyllou, in prep.). 

Table 7.1 shows the common dietary sources of carotenoids in regular vegetable foods, p,g/100 fresh weight. Although the greatest amount of the hydrocarbon carotenoids is present as the all-trans isomer, there is always a proportion of cis isomers present. This table represents only a small number of the fruits and vegetables that contribute carotenoids in the European diet. For more comprehensive information readers are directed to A European Carotenoid Database O Neill et al, 2001, which lists the carotenoid composition of over 100 food items. 

Nowadays food manufacturers, scientists and also consumers are interested in the health effects of foods. Therefore a lot of resources are being devoted to developing new food items with particular health effects for the market. However, in many cases scientific evidence authorising the health claims of such products is lacking. Phloem is one candidate as a functional food because... 

Color plays a special role in the foods we eat. For example, when confronted with a food of an unattractive color, the consumer assumes the food is of poor quality or is spoiled. Similarly, a product with an atypical color, e.g., a green cheese or a blue drink, in most cases would be rejected by the consumer. Typically, one associates certain colors with certain food items such as cherry with red, lemon with yellow, and orange with carrot. Therefore, color can serve as a primary identification of food and also as a protective measure to prevent the consumption of spoiled food. Food colors create physiological and psychological expectations and attitudes that are developed by experience, tradition, education, and environment we inevitably eat with our eyes. ... 

The shade of the blue color produced from P. aerugineum does not change with pH. The color is stable under light, but sensitive to heat. Within a pH range from 4 to 5, the blue color produced from P. aerugineum is stable at 60°C for 40 min (this is not typical of blue colors from Cyanobacteria). This property is important for food uses because many food items, particularly drinks and confections, are acidic. The blue color was added to clear Pepsi Cola (without heat application) and to Bacardi Breezer and these beverages retained their color for at least 1 month at room temperature. 

Sulfonylurea herbicides are generally applied to crops as an early post-emergent herbicide. Crops that are tolerant to these herbicides quickly metabolize them to innocuous compounds. At maturity, residues of the parent compound in food and feed commodities are nondetectable. Metabolites are not considered to be of concern, and their levels are usually nondetectable also. For this reason, the residue definition only includes the parent compound. Tolerances [or maximum residue limits (MRLs)] are based on the LOQ of the method submitted for enforcement purposes and usually range from 0.01 to 0.05 mg kg (ppm) for food items and up to O.lmgkg" for feed items. There is no practical need for residue methods for animal tissues or animal-derived products such as milk, meat, and eggs. Sulfonylurea herbicides are not found in animal feed items, as mentioned above. Furthermore, sulfonylurea herbicides intentionally dosed to rats and goats are mostly excreted in the urine and feces, and the traces that are absorbed are rapidly metabolized to nontoxic compounds. For this reason, no descriptions of methods for animal-derived matrices are given here. 

This approach requires frequent visits to the nest or filming the feeding behavior of smdy species to guide human collection of food items. Although the former process is a direct measure, both procedures allow reliable assessment of pesticide ingestion by indicator species. 

Studies may be designed for estimating exposures to a wide array of wildlife, including birds, mammals and amphibians. Many regulatory requirements involve birds, and less emphasis is currently placed on other species. As regulatory requirements evolve, ecological risk assessments will be required for more species. This may require alternative approaches for food item analysis to allow estimates of pesticide ingestion. 

Large numbers of samples are required to characterize exposure distributions. Starling food items contained the highest diazinon concentrations and the highest... 

Pesticide concentrations in earthworms displayed regional differences. Such differences are likely to be observed in other potential food items. Earthworm exposure was log-normally distributed with the highest concentration being 163 qgg which represents the 97th percentile of diazinon found in earthworms from all sites. The geometric mean diazinon concentration in earthworms from PA was 2.56 agg (CL95 = 1.62. 06qgg ), and from WA was 0.046 xgg ... 

CL95 = 0.008-0.28 qgg ). Diazinon concentrations in earthworm samples were higher p < 0.005) in PA orchards, where rainfall was frequent, than in the more arid WA orchards. This difference also existed for live captured earthworms from PA and WA p < 0.017). A large number of samples are required to detect differences in pesticide exposures from living and dead invertebrates with confidence. Vertebrate exposures can be influenced by differential residue concentration for living and dead/moribund food items. 

Distributions of pesticide concentrations in potential food items for avian species are required to estimate the contribution of food to exposure of birds in different regions where the test chemical may be used. On treated fields, detectable CEF residues were found in 102 of 207 earthworm samples. No earthworm samples collected from control fields (N = 28) contained detectable CEF. Average CEF concentrations in earthworms reached maxima 1-4 days post-application (Table 3). Mean CEF residues in earthworms fell below 0.1 qg g after 8 days post-application. This... 

Oxime carbamates are generally applied either directly to the tilled soil or sprayed on crops. One of the advantages of oxime carbamates is their short persistence on plants. They are readily degraded into their metabolites shortly after application. However, some of these metabolites have insecticidal properties even more potent than those of the parent compound. For example, the oxidative product of aldicarb is aldicarb sulfoxide, which is observed to be 10-20 times more active as a cholinesterase inhibitor than aldicarb. Other oxime carbamates (e.g., methomyl) have degradates which show no insecticidal activity, have low to negligible ecotoxicity and mammalian toxicity relative to the parent, and are normally nondetectable in crops. Therefore, the residue definition may include the parent oxime carbamate (e.g., methomyl) or parent and metabolites (e.g., aldicarb and its sulfoxide and sulfone metabolites). The tolerance or maximum residue limit (MRL) of pesticides on any food commodity is based on the highest residue concentration detected on mature crops at harvest or the LOQ of the method submitted for enforcement purposes if no detectable residues are found. For example, the tolerances of methomyl in US food commodities range from 0.1 to 6 mg kg for food items and up to 40 mg kg for feed items. ... 

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