The Framework for Responsible Research With Australian Native Plant Foods: A Food Chemist's Perspective

Australia is a rich source of biodiverse native plants that are mostly unstudied by western food science despite many of them being ethnofoods of Australian Indigenous people. Finding and understanding the relevant policy and legal requirements to scientifically assess these plants in a responsible way is a major challenge for food scientists. This work aims to give an overview of what the legal and policy framework is in relation to food chemistry on Australian native plant foods, to clarify the relationships between the guidelines, laws, policies and ethics and to discuss some of the challenges they present in food chemistry. This work provides the framework of Indigenous rights, international treaties, federal and state laws and ethical guidelines including key legislation and guidelines. It discusses the specific areas that are applicable to food chemistry: the collection of plant foods, the analysis of the samples and working with Indigenous communities. This brief perspective presents a framework that can be utilized by food chemists when developing responsible research involving plant foods native to northern Australia and can help them understand some of the complexity of working in this research area.

The Cost of Gathering Among the Baka Forager-Horticulturalists From Southeastern Cameroon

What present-day foragers do for their living and what they eat have long been privileged areas for exploring human behavior, global health, and human evolution. While many studies have focused on hunting and meat acquisition, less attention has been given to gathering and plant foods. Despite evidence of variation in both nutritional quality and energetic costs of gathering different plants, the overall effort spent on gathering in relation to other subsistence tasks is still under explored. In the current context of economic, climate, and social changes, many forager societies also rely on other subsistence strategies, including agriculture and wage labor. In this study, we aim to explore the place of gathering in the livelihood of a mixed economy society, the Baka forager-horticulturalists of southeastern Cameroon, by comparing the involvement and the costs of activities related to food acquisition. From a pool of 153 adult participants (97 women and 56 men), we collected 246 daily records using a GPS (Global Positioning System) tracker combined with heart rate monitor and time allocation recalls. We compared the duration, distance traveled, and the intensity of work, measured by calculating the metabolic equivalent of task (MET), of subsistence activities related to food acquisition. Results from this work show that gathering activities, performed by both women and men, are energetically costly, with higher MET values than hunting and fishing activities. Furthermore, the MET values vary depending on the targeted plant foods. We discuss these insights in the overall framework of subsistence patterns, merging them with the socio-cultural and environmental factors that might explain Baka livelihood and subsistence strategy.

Intake of Flavonoids and Odds of Frailty Onset in Adults in the Framingham Offspring Cohort

Polyphenols (antioxidants derived from plant-foods) could play a role in inhibition of oxidative stress and frailty reduction, yet data on the polyphenol subclass of dietary flavonoids is limited. This study sought to determine the association between dietary flavonoids and frailty onset in middle-aged and older adults. This prospective cohort study included non-frail individuals from the Framingham Offspring Cohort (FOC) with total flavonoid intake (mg/day; defined as sum flavonols, flavan-3-ols, flavonones, flavones, and anthocyanins via Harvard Food Frequency Questionnaire), frailty (via Fried phenotype), and covariate information measured at baseline (1998-2001). Follow-up frailty was evaluated in 2011-2014. Logistic regression estimated odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) adjusting for relevant confounders. Participants (n=1,701; 55.5% female) had a mean age of 58.4 years (SD ± 8.3). Mean flavonoid intake was 309 mg/d (SD ± 266). After 12.4 years (SD ± 0.8), 224 (13.2%) individuals exhibited frailty. In age and sex adjusted models, every 50 mg/day of higher total flavonoid intake was associated with 3% reduced odds of frailty [OR (95%CI): 0.97 (0.94-1.00), p-value: 0.05). Further adjustment for smoking, energy and protein intake, and disease indicators did not appreciably change the association, and associations became non-significant (p-value=0.12). Thus, there was no association between flavonoid intake and odds of frailty onset in adults in the FOC. This could be due to participants' higher intake of flavonoids compared to average intake of ~200 mg/d in Americans.

Plants and Subsistence during the Fluted-Point Period of the Northeast

The role of plant foods during the fluted-point period (FPP) of North America is contested. Central to this debate is whether the scarcity of FPP macrobotanical materials stems from poor preservation of archaeological features and the macrobotanical remains they might contain or from the limited use of plants during the FPP. Employing summed probability distributions of radiocarbon date frequencies in northeastern North America, we find that FPP hearths are as common as expected, given the small number of well-dated FPP sites in the region. A second comparison shows that northeastern FPP hearths contain macrobotanical remains at a higher frequency than hearths from a region with better preservation and where small seeds formed a part of the diet. The macrobotanical materials so far recovered from FPP hearths in the Northeast show that plant foods contributed to diets during the FPP but that the plant diet breadth was relatively narrow, consistent with a specialized caribou hunting lifeway.

Association between Unhealthful Plant-Based Diets and Possible Risk of Dyslipidemia

The relationship between the various types of diets derived from plants and vulnerability of dyslipidemia has rarely been investigated, and limited data exist in Asians whose dietary pattern is fairly different from that of the Western population. We aim to analyze the relationship between three plant-based diet indices (PDI) and the risk of dyslipidemia. Participants included 173,209 Korean adults who were aged ≥40 years from the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study_Health Examination (2004–2013). A food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was used to assess dietary intake. Three PDI were quantified for the study: overall PDI, healthful PDI (hPDI), and unhealthful PDI (uPDI). Among the 147,945 included, 48,166 (32.6%) of participants had dyslipidemia. Great adherence to uPDI was related with 15% greater odds of having dyslipidemia (OR: 1.15; 95% CI: 1.11–1.20, p-trend < 0.0001). No significant association was observed between PDI, hPDI, and dyslipidemia. The association between uPDI and dyslipidemia was significantly stronger among participants aged ≥55 years when compared to participants aged <55 years (p-value for interaction = 0.001). The quality of plant foods is vital in preventing dyslipidemia among people consuming high plant-based food diets.

Phytochemical diversity behind health-promoting effects of traditional Mediterranean foods

A healthy diet can reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer. In general, a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grain cereals, legumes, and nuts, in which products of animal origin are limited, according to the model of the Mediterranean diet, can help prevent the onset of chronic degenerative diseases, together with other lifestyles. This narrative review presents the most representative classes of bioactive phytochemicals and the main Mediterranean foods in which they are present, providing evidence in humans of their health-promoting effects. Keywords: functional foods, nutraceuticals, plant foods, Mediterranean diet, nutritional therapy, non-communicable diseases, disease prevention

Differential Influence of Soluble Dietary Fibres on Intestinal and Hepatic Carbohydrate Response

Refined foods are commonly depleted in certain bioactive components that are abundant in ‘natural’ (plant) foods. Identification and addition of these ‘missing’ bioactives in the diet is, therefore, necessary to counteract the deleterious impact of convenience food. In this study, multiomics approaches were employed to assess the addition of the popular supplementary soluble dietary fibers inulin and psyllium, both in isolation and in combination with a refined animal feed. A 16S rRNA sequencing and 1H NMR metabolomic investigation revealed that, whilst inulin mediated an increase in Bifidobacteria, psyllium elicited a broader microbial shift, with Parasutterella and Akkermansia being increased and Enterorhabdus and Odoribacter decreased. Interestingly, the combination diet benefited from both inulin and psyllium related microbial changes. Psyllium mediated microbial changes correlated with a reduction of glucose (R −0.67, −0.73, respectively, p < 0.05) and type 2 diabetes associated metabolites: 3-methyl-2-oxovaleric acid (R −0.72, −0.78, respectively, p < 0.05), and citrulline (R −0.77, −0.71, respectively, p < 0.05). This was in line with intestinal and hepatic carbohydrate response (e.g., Slc2a2, Slc2a5, Khk and Fbp1) and hepatic lipogenesis (e.g., Srebf1 and Fasn), which were significantly reduced under psyllium addition. Although established in the liver, the intestinal response associated with psyllium was absent in the combination diet, placing greater significance upon the established microbial, and subsequent metabolomic, shift. Our results therefore highlight the heterogeneity that exists between distinct dietary fibers in the context of carbohydrate uptake and metabolism, and supports psyllium containing combination diets, for their ability to negate the impact of a refined diet.