Coloring Your Perception of Food

Coloring Your Perception of Food

By Emma Gottschall

                  Today, it’s common to see articles that read “A Dangerous Rainbow” or “What are we feeding our children”. The conversation around safety of colors is being led by popular food activists like the “Food Babe”, and artificial food colors have come under fire. Push back from consumers has led top food manufacturers like Kraft and Mars to begin removing artificial food colors from their products. But why are consumers fighting for the death of artificial food dyes and if they are dangerous, why hasn’t the FDA banned them already?

Food dyes have been used for thousands of years, originating around 1500 B.C. These original food dyes came from natural sources like saffron, squid ink, and certain flowers. With the advent of food colorants, food vendors had the ability to misrepresent their products—often for economic gain—by making lower quality foods more appealing to consumers. Often these colorants were toxic, like copper which was used to color pickled vegetables in the 1800’s and Scheele’s green, containing arsenic, which was used to color candies in the early 1900s. Today, the FDA regulates the use of synthetic and natural food colors in Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics. Some food dyes (eg: Red #40) can cause sensitivities, and so food manufacturers are required to label their usage in food products.

                  Much of the current controversy over food dyes is their potential to promote hyperactivity in children. Hyperactive behavior has been linked to children who suffer from ADHD, and some studies imply that artificial food colors may affect children without behavioral conditions. These studies have prompted the EU to restrict the use of these artificial colors; requiring disclosure text on products with these colorants.

                  The Center for Science in the Public Interest is petitioning the FDA for the second time, to ban the use of all Artificial Food Colors in the food industry. After an initial petition in 2011, an FDA committee ruled that there was not enough conclusive evidence that food dyes cause hyperactivity. The committee concluded that more research was needed before they could prohibit the use of synthetic colors.

                  Since the 1970s,  several studies, often using exclusion diets to study what happens when artificial food colors are removed from the diet have shown improvements in children’s behavior and attention when artificial colors are removed from the diet. However, these diets usually remove other food additives, like preservatives, at the same time; making it difficult to identify a single cause for the behavior changes. Not to mention these studies often use parental or teacher observations to measure child behavior, which is difficult to compare.

One cause of these behavioral effects might be related to aspirin sensitivities. Although pain relievers may seem completely unrelated to food dyes, some food colors, including Yellow #5,have a similar chemical structure to aspirin, both contain salicylic acid residues. In fact, many exclusion diets recommended to treat behavioral problems suggest removing foods containing natural salicylates for the same reason. Other researchers hypothesize that tartrazine (yellow #5) might bind Zinc in the blood. Zinc is necessary for proper brain function and deficiencies can cause behavioral changes. When tartrazine is excreted in urine, any bound zinc would also be excreted.

                  With growing consumer concerns, retailers are reformulating their products with natural colorants. But consumers have an expectation that some foods need to be brightly colored—and those vibrant shades are often difficult to achieve without the use of artificial food dyes. General Mills is one of many retailers who understands that education is key, and has begun a campaign to show consumers what their foods will look like with natural food colors. If people aren’t prepared for these changes, they may avoid foods creating food waste. Consumers want bright colors and right now there aren’t many natural colors which can replace these bright synthetic dyes. Understanding what the switch will entail is important before artificial colors can be completely replaced. If Cheetos were suddenly pale instead of neon there might not be riots in the streets, but there would certainly be complaints!

Examples of snack food seasonings containing artificial food colors (A,C) and their counterparts made with natural food colors (B,D).

Food Safety Testing with Bacterial Vigilantes: Bacteriocins

Food Safety Testing with Bacterial Vigilantes: Bacteriocins

By Alex Rogers

            Food safety is a topic that concerns everyone. We all eat, thus we all should take into account the current state of the food that goes on our forks and into our bodies. If you’re eating right now, grab a forkful and take a look at your food. A real close look. Could there be something else on there, besides what you’re intending to eat? Some microscopic organism swimming through the mayonnaise in your potato salad? Miniature bugs, impossible to see with the naked eye, living in luxury on the surface of the beef in your fried rice?

            Don’t get grossed out yet. Though it’s true that a one hundred percent bacteria free food is impossible as microorganisms exist everywhere (like the millions that colonize your skin and gut as is), the bacteria that cause harm are generally well controlled by the food production industry anything reaches your table. Generally, that is. The FDA displays recall data on their website; a list of foods pulled from the shelves every week to help prevent disease outbreak. But not every potential pathogen is detected before it goes out on the shelves or into the restaurants we visit, which is why events such as a widespread Listeria outbreak of Blue Bell dairy products or the multi-state Chipotle catastrophe in December of 2015 happened.

            Why do these things occur? Most likely it is due to a lack of manpower and time. It’s physically impossible to check every every sample of food at food production companies. Even if it were possible to do it all, you simply couldn’t test every sample to begin with as then you’d have nothing left to sell. You could find negative results in all of your products but the one positive that somehow snuck by can shut it all down.

            Besides an inability to test every company in the most thorough of manner, the other reason food products may go out contaminated and then force a recall boils down to the methods we use to make sure the product is safe. Numerous techniques used in the lab are extremely dated, think decades old. We use agar plates: jelly like substances that have been modified to select for the specific evil bacteria we try to avoid like E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, or Listeria. But their precision is lacking, often picking out similar, non-harmful bacteria in the process and creating false positives, in addition to taking 5 – 7 days to get these final results.

            We have expensive equipment that can break down the bacteria to its DNA and determine if the specific baddie is present at this subcellular level by matching up specific fragments to past data. Using this technique is much quicker than the agars mentioned above, but also takes a good deal more training to accomplish correctly and generally still relies on pre-enrichment or enrichment steps that allow the bacteria to grow in their most favorable conditions.

            However, the most problematic of complications with the agars and the machines is that they just aren’t one hundred percent perfect even when everything is going right. They can’t detect bacteria below a certain number and that means a food sample contaminated with just a few cells of Listeria can pass inspection, go to the grocery store, experience exponential growth in colony size, and then cause sickness in future buyers of the product.

            Innovation really needs to take place in the food safety field, all the way back to the first steps of just determining if there is a safety concern to begin with. Most of the new technology involves improving detection methods, the final step in a food safety assessment of a product. It gets the emphasis because this is the result we want: is the bacteria there or not? How much of it is there? Is this food safe to consume? In the end, though, improving detection has its limits and those limits are still the initial amount of bacteria present when that sample gets checked. Additionally, when checking for the safety of the food product, not only is the presence of bacteria important to know, but the type of bacteria as well.

            What’s being done to improve these detection techniques then? A lot, actually. The most interesting of this new technology uses a bacteria’s own structure against it: bacteriocins. Bacteriocins are small bits of protein fragments isolated from bacteria and new research has shown they can be very effective at grabbing ahold of bacteria and keeping them in place to allow easy detection testing. How does it work? You coat a surface, say a tube, with the bacteriocins, attach some electrical monitoring device to the tube, and pass your food sample through the center. The bacteriocins, claws reaching out into the liquid of the food sample, grab and bind to the bacteria that passes by. These interactions create chemical changes that translate into electrical changes that trigger the monitoring device, thus alerting the watchful food microbiologist of the presence of the target bacteria.

There are two important parts to this method that make it invaluable in food safety testing. The first is the fact that the bacteriocin’s binding ability is species specific. Certain bacteriocins bind to certain bacteria and thus, if you’re seeing a reading, that means not only is bacteria present, but specifically the bacteria you are looking for. In addition, these chemical and electrical signals are detected at any interaction. What does this mean? Just one interaction of bacteria with bacteriocin will create a response, meaning detection can occur at exceptionally low initial levels of contamination.

            Is this technology being used now? Unfortunately, no. A lot more testing needs to take place first. Results with actual food samples have been spotty, in no small part because of the mentioned complexity that comes with trying to tell if a food is safe or not. Not to fear, the research is ongoing and food products will be made safer and will be ensured at higher standards as time goes by. Food recalls and outbreaks may not stop completely, but they can be reduced to an infrequent and rare state. Take a deep breath, there are a lot of people whose one goal in life is to make sure the food you are eating is safe. Now take that bite still sitting on your fork.

New Chocolate Quality and Flavor in the Works

New Chocolate Quality and Flavor in the Works

by Kelly Sparks

Contrary to popular belief, chocolate bars are not made from a flowing, brown river. I’m looking at you for blame, Willy Wonka.

 Photo from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Paramount Pictures

You won’t even find a chocolate tree, as they are just as rare as money trees. And the Easter bunny does not actually lay chocolate eggs. I know, this sounds terrible, but please keep reading, for what I am going to tell you is the very truth about how chocolate is made, along with some secrets about chocolate and how there may be a new kind of chocolate in the near future. Yes! A new kind of chocolate. Your eyes read that right. But, before I get there, we must start at the beginning.

The beginning:

While chocolate does not grow on trees, cocoa pods do. These cocoa pods are harvested and the pods and pulp inside the cocoa pod are taken out. This is the start to making the dark, delicious treat we know as chocolate.

The middle:

The pods and pulp are contained together and then the pulp starts a fermentation process that lasts about a week. This step is important because it is where the flavor of chocolate first starts to develop. Keep this in mind.

This leads us to the drying stage. From here, we have dried beans, which are then roasted. The beans are roasted at high temperatures for a period of time. This plays a role in the flavor of the chocolate bar. The dried beans contain cocoa butter, amino acids (which are the building blocks of proteins), sugars, and antioxidants; so when heated, they move around and collide with each other (just like you would do if you were being roasted), and this results in chocolate-like flavors.

The roasted cocoa beans have a thin, paper-like coating around them, so a process called winnowing is done to remove them, leaving just cocoa nibs.

The cocoa nibs are grounded to reduce particle size until they form cocoa liquor, which is made up of cocoa solids and cocoa butter. A conching process then takes place, during which the cocoa butter is evenly distributed throughout the chocolate while and sugar, and milk powder (for milk chocolate), and other flavorings are added. This process may take a few hours up until a few days, and affects the flavor of the chocolate. It is said that higher quality, better chocolate is conched longer.

The temperature of the chocolate is raised, lowered, and then raised again so that the chocolate has a smooth mouthfeel and so you can hear a snap when you break a piece off.

The end:

The chocolate is now what most of us consider chocolate, and it is now molded into any shape or design the chocolate manufacturer wants. Once the chocolate is cooled, it is wrapped and ready to be eaten by the customer (you)!

Fascinating. Oh yeah? The new kind of chocolate, don’t worry, I didn’t forget. This is the best part.

So, recall one of the middle processing steps of chocolate: fermentation. During this stage, naturally present yeasts and bacteria ferment the gooey pulp. Remember, this stage is when the flavors of chocolate first develop. Well, research conducted by The University of Leuven and the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, along with the chocolate brand, Callebaut, show that using specific yeast strains can provide a better quality final chocolate product with new flavors and aromas. Lead researcher in this study, Dr. Jan Steensels, said “the set of new yeast variants that we generated makes it possible to create a whole range of boutique chocolates to match everyone’s favorite flavor, similar to wines, tea, and coffee”.

Similar to beer and wine, which also undergo fermentation, chocolate will be able to have a wider spectrum of flavors and aromas, ranging from a more fruity chocolate to a more sour chocolate. This means that we can match our favorite beer flavor with a complementary chocolate flavor. Or just have the new chocolate flavor by itself as a snack because it’s chocolate and doesn’t need to be paired with anything. The choice is yours. But for now, you can look forward to and dream about a new kind of chocolate.

Antibiotic stewardship: not a burden for animal agriculture alone

Antibiotic stewardship: not a burden for animal agriculture alone

By Bill Hsu

Incidence of antibiotic resistant bacterial infections are higher than ever, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) note that at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections.  It’s no wonder then, that fears of rampant superbugs are fueling the debate about responsible antibiotic usage, and much of the talk centers around antibiotics used in animal agriculture.  The same fungi spores that bore our first antibiotics find other use in the food industry though.  After all, it does take Penicillium to make blue cheese or Roquefort.  Much like some cheeses though, the debate surrounding is chock full of holes. 

California Senate Bill 27 (SB27) was signed October 2015 to combat what was described as widespread and unregulated use of antibiotics in animal agriculture at low or sub-therapeutic doses to increase weight gain in animals before they went off to slaughter.  SB27 expressly prohibits use of medically important antibiotics in animals unless they were prescribed by a veterinarian.  It also bans the use of antibiotics used for growth-promotion. 

SB27 references the Food and Drug Administration’s Guidance for Industry Document #152 (GFI 152).  These are rules the FDA proposed to classify different antibiotics important in human medicine into three categories: important, highly important, and critically important.  The list is extensive and includes highly specific-use antibiotics, as well as broader spectrum antibiotics that you might get from your doctor if you have a small infection.  This list, however comprehensive, is mostly meaningless in trying to limit antibiotic usage in California’s food producing animals.

Antibiotics generally have multiple indications on their label.  Macrolides and tetracycline are both classes of antibiotics that make an appearance on GFI 152.  These classes of antibiotics are also some of the most commonly used antibiotics in animal agriculture.  Based off those two facts alone, you’d suspect that using these two classes of antibiotics to promote weight gain is rampant in animal agriculture, but you’d be wrong.  You see, these antibiotics have several indications on their label. 

When a licensed veterinarian writes a prescription, or in this case, assigns a feed directive for a farm, he or she is prescribing the same antibiotics we mentioned were used to promote weight gain in animals—albeit, in higher concentrations.  You read that right—when you’re treating animals to prevent disease in areas of exposure risk, you’re using the more of the same antibiotics you were trying to limit use of!

But does it even matter?  The Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals from the FDA highlights that the two largest classes of antibiotics used domestically in agriculture are tetracycline (which you or I can buy today) and ionophores, which serve no function at all in the human body.  Together, these two account for about 3/4^th of all antibiotics used in agriculture.  Our most valuable antibiotics, those classified as critically important in human medicine, including 3^rd generation Cephalosporins and Flouroquinolones, see the heaviest usage in healthcare.  In fact, each of these account for less than 1% of usage in animal agriculture.  The fear of prolific superbugs spelling our demise is driving action like SB27, but the CDC  spells it out clearly—most deaths related to antibiotic resistance happen in healthcare settings such as hospital and nursing homes.

Antibiotic stewardship is a responsibility we all share.  With the discovery of penicillin, antibiotics have shaped what we know of modern medicine.  Antibiotics are powerful tools, but have a very finite practical life.  Investment in alternative practices in animal agriculture, including vaccines and animal management can help draw down total usage numbers.  Physicians dialing back antibiotic scripts, except in the most important cases can help prevent abuse of our most essential antibiotics.  Finish your antibiotics as prescribed.  Don’t flush extra pills down the drain.  A concerted effort to managing antibiotics, from all fronts, is necessary to address growing threats of resistance.

Attention spans are short and opinions are heard louder than ever.  Shifting the focus solely to agriculture while ignoring healthcare data, or making only symbolic attempts at bandaging the very real problem of overuse of antibiotics, especially of those critically important in human medicine, mean we will someday lose our best tools in healthcare.  Remember that for the future, whether it’s a doctor’s office you find yourself in or the meat and cheese display at your local deli.