Effect of combining sleep-promoting food intake and electric field application on sleep in healthy participants: A pilot study

Background: Functional foods and electric fields (EFs) have been previously reported as interventions for insomnia other than medications. As for functional foods, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and lafma have been reported to be related to sleep. EFs have also been reported to have a sleep-related, anti-stress effect in mouse model experiments. However, the effects of combining these two methods on the human body remain poorly studied. Objective: Thus, this study aimed to investigate the cointervention effect of sleep-promoting functional food intake and EF application on sleep quality in healthy participants. Methods: Fifteen healthy participants were divided into three groups. The Food and Placebo groups were given active tablets containing food mixture of GABA and lafma, and placebo tablets, respectively, for 4 weeks. Meanwhile, the Food plus EF group used an EF therapy device during sleep in addition to the active food tablets. Sleep quality was evaluated using electroencephalography and sleep questionnaires.Results: Sleep efficiency (SE) was significantly higher in the Food group and the Food plus EF group than the Placebo group at 4 weeks. The Food plus EF group also had a significantly higher SE involving sleep latency. Conclusions: Food mixture containing known sleep-promoting ingredients such as GABA and lafma can improve sleep quality, and the improvement effect can be enhanced when administered in combination with an EF.Keywords: electric field therapy, Kumasasa (Sasa senanensis), electric fields, sleep quality, electroencephalographyClinical trial registration: Approval No.: R1812; Approval date: 21 Feb. 2019

Volatiles Play an Important Role in the Attractiveness of Food for Trapping the Stored Grain Pests Oryzaephilus surinamensis L. (Coleoptera: Silvanidae)

The Oryzaephilus surinamensis L. (Coleoptera: Silvanidae), is widely distributed all over the world, this beetle causes serious damage to stored products. Much attention has been paid to use food attraction or food volatile as a non-pollution method to achieve pest management. However, in this study, six most attractive food to O. surinamensis were selected among thirty eight food. Furthermore, the food mixture M17 with the best attractiveness were selected among the eighteen food mixtures combined by these six foods at different ratio. Subsequently food mixture M17 were tested in actual barn and compared with commercial attractant. We collected the volatile from food mixture, the volatile compounds attractive to this beetle also. We identified six electrophysio-logically active compounds responsible for the attraction of O. surinamensis, among the six chemically identified compounds, nonanal, dodecane, tridecaneand β-caryophyllene significantly attracted O. surinamensis when tested individually in behavioral assays. Blend of six chemicals according to food volatile concentration was most attractive to the beetles. The findings of this study reveal that food mixture M17 and food volatile can be potentially used for development of effective attractants for management of O. surinamensis.

Optimizing flavonoid-rich Quranic Mixed Food (QMF) formulation with simplex-centroid mixture design

Quranic food, which defines as the food mentioned in the Holy Quran has gain attention as a functional food to prevent disease in the current era. The food had high potential as an excellent ingredient for the development of nutraceutical products. Flavonoid is one of the phytochemicals in Quranic food that contribute to their therapeutic properties. Unfortunately, there is less study on the health properties of Quranic food mixture that lead to misunderstanding of the mixture of Quranic food. A paramount concern regarding the addition of multiple bioactive ingredients into a product is the possibility of interaction among elements may result in degradation of the ingredient, and the functionality could be reduced or improved. Therefore, this study was aimed to optimize the flavonoid content of Quranic Mixed Food (QMF) containing dates, raisins, pomegranates, figs, and honey. Consequently, the special cubic model of simplex centroid design was employed as it was the most reliable and can be utilized in the optimization process as the p-value was significant, and the lack of fits was not substantial. The simplex centroid method had successfully optimized the QMF formulation. To conclude, the optimized formulation of flavonoid-rich QMF containing 42.88% raisins, 42.88% pomegranates, 13.97% honey, 0.17% dates, and 0.11% figs.

Effect of Added Sugar on the Consumption of A Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplement Among 7–24-Month-Old Children

Small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements (SQ-LNS) could help prevent malnutrition. Our primary objective was to examine the acceptability and consumption of sweetened and unsweetened versions of SQ-LNS before and after 14-days of repeated exposure. A total of 78 mother-infant dyads recruited from health centers in Morelos, Mexico, were randomized to two groups of SQ-LNS (sweetened, LNS-S; unsweetened, LNS-U). During the study, infants were fed SQ-LNS (20 g) mixed with 30 g of complementary food of the caregiver’s choice. The amount of supplement-food mixture consumed was measured before, during and after a 14-day home exposure period. We defined acceptability as consumption of at least 50% of the offered food mixture. At initial exposure, LNS-U consumption was on average 44.0% (95% CI: 31.4, 58.5) and LNS-S 34.8% (25.3, 44.0); at final exposure, LNS-U and LNS-S consumption were 38.5% (27.8, 54.0) and 31.5% (21.6, 43.0). The average change in consumption did not differ between the groups (2.2 p.p. (−17.2, 24.4)). We conclude that the acceptability of sweetened and unsweetened SQ-LNS was low in this study population. Since consumption did not differ between supplement versions, we encourage the use of the unsweetened version given the potential effects that added sugar may have on weight gain especially in regions facing the double burden of malnutrition.

Impact of Sacbrood Virus on Larval Microbiome of Apis mellifera and Apis cerana

In this study, we examined the impact of Sacbrood virus (SBV), the cause of larval honeybee (Apis mellifera) death, producing a liquefied a larva sac, on the gut bacterial communities on two larval honeybee species, Apis mellifera and Apis cerana. SBV was added into a worker jelly food mixture and bee larvae were grafted into each of the treatment groups for 24 h before DNA/RNA extraction. Confirmation of SBV infection was achieved using quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and visual symptomology. The 16S rDNA was sequenced by Illumina sequencing. The results showed the larvae were infected with SBV. The gut communities of infected A. cerana larvae exhibited a dramatic change compared with A. mellifera. In A. mellifera larvae, the Illumina sequencing revealed the proportion of Gilliamella, Snodgrassella and Fructobacillus was not significantly different, whereas in A. cerana, Gilliamella was significantly decreased (from 35.54% to 2.96%), however, with significant increase in Snodgrassella and Fructobacillus. The possibility of cross-infection should be further investigated.

Are the growth and survival of Acheta domesticus comparable when reared on okara, waste vegetables and premium animal feed?

The domesticated house cricket, Acheta domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758), has been lauded as a more sustainable protein source than traditional livestock to meet the ever-increasing demand for food. There is also a potential of using waste food, such as okara (soybean residue from the manufacture of soy milk and tofu) and waste vegetables which are commonly available in many parts of Southeast Asia, to feed these insects. Food wastage can be reduced while increasing the food supply if the crickets can grow and survive well on waste food. Thus, we investigated the viability of rearing A. domesticus on oligidic diets, specifically waste vegetables and okara, to optimise the use of waste food as feed to the crickets. We monitored cricket mortality and fresh weight of 32 individually housed crickets subjected to different diet treatments, every other day for 45 days. The crickets reared on Brassica rapa (xiao bai cai; XBC) and okara mixture did not grow and survive as well as those reared on the XBC and dog food mixture, contradicting our initial prediction that okara is a suitable cricket feed, even though it has been considered one of the best oligidic diets. We also did not find any evidence that crickets reared on mixed diets of XBC and okara food grew or survived better than single diets of XBC or okara. This showed that okara cannot always replace premium animal feed to rear A. domesticus crickets.