1,721,148 research outputs found
Plant Foods and Underutilized Fruits as Source of Functional Food Ingredients Chemical Composition, Quality Traits, and Biological Properties
No full textChanges in lifestyle and demographics, rising consumer incomes, and shifting preferences
due to advanced knowledge about the relationships between food and health contribute to generate new needs in the food supply. Today, the role of food is not only intended as hunger satisfaction and nutrient supply but also as an opportunity to prevent nutrition-related diseases and improve physical and mental well-being. For this reason, there is a growing interest in the novel or less well-known plant foods that offer an opportunity for health maintenance. Recently, interest in plant foods and underutilized fruits is continuously growing, and agrobiodiversity exploitation offers effective and extraordinary potentialities. Plant foods could be an important source of health promoting compounds and functional food ingredients with beneficial properties: the description of the quality and physicochemical traits, the identification and quantification of bioactive compounds, and the evaluation of their biological activities are important to assess plant food efficacy as functional foods or source of food supplement ingredients
Analisi non distruttive per la valorizzazione degli scarti di produzione di una categoria di integratori alimentari a base erboristica: i gemmoderivati
No full textBud-derivates from woody ornamental trees and shrubs: the FINNOVER project
No full textFINNOVER (“Innovative strategies for the development of cross-border green supply chains”, ALCOTRA project 2017-2020 Italia-Francia, Finnover n° 1198) is an Alcotra Italy-France trans-frontier project, whose aim is the “green” innovation of different agro-industrial chains in terms of circular economy and, particularly, the eco-sustainable extraction and formulation of natural bioactive phytocomplexes in plant-based ingredients and/or dietary supplements (botanicals). Gemmotherapy is a branch of phytotherapy that uses meristematic fresh tissues of trees and plants, such as buds or young sprouts, by cold maceration in solvents (i.e., ethanol and glycerol). In the European Community this category of natural products is classified and commercialized as plant food supplements. The valorisation of bud by-products represents an interesting innovation in this field, since the phenological stage of buds or young sprouts extremely limits their collection period over time, making them quite expensive compared to other botanicals. This research aims to explore the potential usage of Pulsed Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction (PUAE) both for the bud-derivative production, comparing the obtained extracts with the traditional glyceric macerates, and to exploit the by-products of their supply chain. PUAE, an eco-sustainable and relatively low-cost procedure, has been employed aiming at increasing the extraction efficiency and at reducing the extraction-time. The lab-scale experimental conditions (i.e., ultrasounds amplitude, duty-cycle and time) have been optimized on Ribes nigrum L. buds by Design of Experiment (DoE) technique. The same solvent and solid/solvent rate of the commercial glyceric macerates have been used both for the buds and for their by-products. The quality and the quantity comparisons with the glyceric macerates were obtained by untargeted phytochemical fingerprints by UV-Vis and Fluorescence spectroscopy followed by targeted phytochemical fingerprints by HPLC
An innovative green extraction and re-use strategy to valorize food supplement by-products: Castanea sativa bud preparations as case study
No full textThis research takes place in the context of an Alcotra Italy-France trans-frontier project called FINNOVER, which includes among its objectives the "green" innovation of agro-industrial chains. Bud-derivatives are a category of natural products produced macerating meristematic tissues of trees and plants. They are quite expensive compared to other botanicals, since the collection period of their raw materials is extremely limited over the time. Pulsed Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction has been employed to extract further valuable material from the buds by-products remaining after the production of Castanea sativa Glyceric Macerates. UV-Visible spectra coupled with chemometrics were employed, as untargeted phytochemical fingerprints, to quickly screen the best experimental conditions of extraction: a duty cycle of 80%, an extraction time of 15 min and a solvent/ratio of 1/10. Targeted phytochemical fingerprints by HPLC have been used to identify and quantify the main bioactive compounds of the most promising marcs extract comparing it with the corresponding commercial Castanea sativa Glyceric Macerate. An innovative extraction and re-use strategy to obtain value-added products from botanicals by-products was developed in alternative to incineration or composting. It was applied to Castanea sativa buds production as case study, but it could be analogously applied for other herbal preparations
Pomegranate, bud-derivatives, and lavender: three example of eco-sustainable industrial supply chains
No full textThe development of sustainable solutions for the management of agricultural and food waste is currently one of the main challenges of our society. In developing countries, agriculture and food processing generate large amounts of waste and by-products, with a significant environmental, economic, and social impact. On the other hand, many of these products could represent a potential source of valuable compounds (i.e., bioactive compounds, macronutrients, micronutrients, and dietary fibers)1.
Pomegranate (Punica granatum) crop is nowadays spread all over the world for its high longevity, drought and salinity resistance and adaptability to different climatic conditions. Pomegranate juice is the main industrial product obtained from this fruit, and the by-products of this processing represent an expensive disposal problem but also a promising source of bioactive compounds to be exploited. Particularly, ellagic acid (EA), in its free form or in the form of ellagitannins (ETs), is considered the main phenolic compound responsible for the numerous health properties of pomegranate and is mainly concentrated in the by-products with respect to the juice (both external peels and internal edible marcs)2.
Bud-derivatives and lavender represent two supply chains studied in the Finnover "Innovative strategies for the development of cross border green supply chains" project, namely a cross-border Italy/France EU Interreg Alcotra project (2017-2021). The aims of this research project were the innovation and the sustainable implementation of several agro-industrial processing chains in view of the green circular economy and the valorization of the biodiversity of the Alcotra territory. In particular, the management of waste deriving from agricultural and food processing is one of the main topics of the project. Bud-derivatives, which represent a relatively new category of plant food supplements obtained macerating meristematic tissues of trees and plants (i.e., buds and young sprouts), are very expensive products compared to other botanicals, since the collection period of their raw materials is extremely limited over time3. Lavender essential oil has been widely used as herbal medicine for centuries in the traditional medicine. The solid by-products remaining after the distillation of lavender, are considered as a potential and still under-utilized source of phenolic compounds to be valorized.
In this study, the innovative and eco-compatible Pulsed Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction (PUAE) demonstrated to be a promising strategy to valorize these waste and by-products by obtaining in a very short time (10-20 min), using only food-grade extraction solvents, new potential ingredients to use in different fields (food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical etc.).
[1] C. Torres-León, N. Ramírez-Guzman, L. Londoño-Hernandez, G.A. Martinez-Medina, R. Díaz-Herrera, V. Navarro-Macias, O.B. Alvarez-Pérez, B. Picazo, M. Villarreal-Vázquez, J. Ascacio-Valdes, C.N. Aguilar, Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 2018, 2, 52.
[2] F. Turrini, R. Boggia, D. Donno, B. Parodi, G. Beccaro, S. Baldassari, M.G. Signorello, S. Catena, S. Alfei, P. Zunin, Eur Food Res Technol 2020, 246, 273-285.
[3] F. Turrini, D. Donno, G.L. Beccaro, P. Zunin, A.M. Pittaluga, R. Boggia, Foods, 2019, 8, 466
The FINNOVER project: the green innovation in the industrial chain of bud-derivatives food supplements
No full textVALUTAZIONE DELL’AUTENTICITÀ DI ALIMENTI E INTEGRATORI ALIMENTARI A BASE VEGETALE MEDIANTE FINGERPRINT SPETTROFOTOMETRICA UV_VISIBILE E ANALISI STATISTICA MULTIVARIATA
No full textLo sviluppo di metodi di analisi rapidi e non distruttivi per assicurare l'autenticità di ciò che viene dichiarato nelle etichettedi alimenti ed estratti a base vegetale è di interesse comune sia per il settore industriale al fine di salvaguardare prodotti di qualità, sia per i consumatori. Se da un lato, la sostituzione anche parziale di un vegetale o di un suo estratto con un altro rappresenta un danno economico, dall’altro l’omissione di alcuni ingredienti, presenti, ma non dichiarati, potrebbe avere ripercussioni anche gravi sulla salute dei consumatori (es. allergeni nascosti). La maggior parte delle metodiche analitiche ad oggi riportate in letteratura per l’autenticazione dei succhi di frutta, come esempio di alimento a base vegetale, e di macerati glicerici o tinture madri, come esempio di integratori alimentari a base erboristica,implicano prevalentemente l’utilizzo di metodiche distruttive e/o di strumenti ad alto costo e/o l’uso di grandi quantità di solventi. Inoltre, tali metodiche sono spesso onerose da un punto di vista sia dei costi siadei tempi di analisi. Per ovviare a questi inconvenienti è stata messa a punto un’alternativa analitica rapida non distruttivada utilizzare quanto meno in una fase di screening, al fine di evidenziare rapidamente alcune delle più tipiche azioni illecite operate in questi settori. Il metodo analitico proposto si basa sulla spettroscopia UV-visibile e sull’analisi multivariata dei dati. La spettrofotometria UV-visibile, notoriamente poco costosa e di facile impiego, è stata utilizzata non in maniera tradizionale, bensì come tecnica aspecifica a fingerprintaccoppiandola alla analisi statistica multivariata
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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