Subject food starches

Food Starch, Modified, usually occurs as white or nearly white powders as intact granules and if pregelatinized (that is, subjected to heat treatment in the presence of water), as flakes, amorphous powders, or coarse particles. Modified food starches are products of the treatment of any of several grain-or root-based native starches (for example, com, sorghum, wheat, potato, tapioca, and sago), with small amounts of certain chemical agents, which modify the physical characteristics of the native starches to produce desirable properties. 

We subject envelope and stamp adhesives to stringent safety requirements. Since we re likely to swallow traces of the stuff, we have to regulate it as a food. Gum arable from the acacia tree, dextrin from corn starch, and the water soluble resin polyvinyl alcohol are the adhesives we use most often. We also... 

Inclusion complexes of amylose are rather well defined, and a consistent theory of such complexes is available that explains amylose complexes with iodine, fatty acids, alcohols, and other guest molecules.4,5 This subject is surveyed in this article because of the growing interest and importance of such complexes in pharmacology and in the food industry. It is probable that starch in its biological sources (tubers, granules) exists in the form of native complexes with proteins, lipids, mineral salts, and water. 

The following study illustrates the range in availability of iron whenexmsumed with various foods. The subjects consumed a dose of radioactive iron ( Fe or Fe) that had been dispersed In the test food. The test foods included starch (Experiment 1), com meal mush (Expt. 2), com meal mush with meat (Expt. 3), bread (Expt. 4), and bread and meat Expt. 5). The availability of the iron was determined by measuring the amount of radioactivity incorporated into the red blood cells 2 weeks after consumption of the test meal. The results, listed in Table 10.12, show that iron s availability was lowest when mixed with the com meal and that availability was improved when meat was consumed with the com meal. The meat seemed not to affect the availability of the iron in the bread. It is not clear why the effect of the meat differed in Experiments 3 and 5. 

Most chemicals that are direct additives to drinking water present little hazard to health. Many of these chemicals also have been used as food additives and have been subjected to appropriate levels of toxicological testing. Other additives, such as starch, are natural foodstuffs and would be generally regarded as safe, especially at the low concentrations that would be expected to reach the tap. 

Economics. No consideration of the literature would be complete without the economic study made by the Food Research Institute of Stanford University (66). The studies are mainly concerned with crops, markets, and economics, and comprise a monumental contribution to the literature of wheat. Some technical papers on wheat in the diet, wheat protein, starch and flour quality, bread staling, utilization of wheat germ, and physical tests of flour quality are included. An index to this series (62) consists of abstracts of the annual reviews and special studies, and a chronological list of the individual issues, and lists, by author and subject, of the special studies. 

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