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Key Findings and Implications of a Recent Systematic Review of the Potential Adverse Effects of Caffeine Consumption in Healthy Adults, Pregnant Women, Adolescents, and Children

June 1, 2018 in /by

Scientific findings lose their value if they cannot be easily translated for comprehension by diverse audiences. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) also recognizes this fact, and their guidance related to systematic reviews suggests that plain language summaries can improve the work’s usability for general audiences (IOM, 2009). Thus, the aim of this paper is to provide a plain-language summary of this important review, and the reader is referred to the original work for full references. This summary paper will help the findings be more understandable and allow individuals to make educated decisions regarding their (or their patients') intake of this commonly consumed ingredient- caffeine.

Institution: ToxStrategies, Inc.
Principal Investigator: Candace Doepker, PhD
Year Awarded: 2018

Read the Key Findings and Implications of a Recent Systematic Review.
View the Systematic Review of the Health Effects Associated with Consumption of Caffeine in Humans.

Learn more about the IAFNS Caffeine Committee.

Investigating the Potential Risk of Untargeted Iron Supplementation Among Cambodian Women

April 25, 2018 in /by

There is a lack of evidence on the safety of untargeted daily iron supplementation in women, especially in countries such as Cambodia, where both anemia and genetic hemoglobinopathies are common. Our aim is to assess biomarkers of potential adverse outcomes in Cambodian women who received daily oral iron supplements in accordance with the recent 2016 global WHO guidelines. The findings will provide critical data to inform the safety of the WHO global policy for untargeted iron supplementation for non-pregnant women worldwide.

Institution: University of British Columbia
Principal Investigator: Crystal Karakochuk, PhD
Year Awarded: 2018

The IAFNS Future Leader Award, given annually to promising nutrition and food scientists, allows new investigators the opportunity to add to an existing project or to conduct exploratory research that might not receive funding from other sources or add to an existing project. Consideration is given to individuals proposing research in the areas of experimental nutrition, nutrition and toxicology, and nutrition and food science. Grants extend for a period of 2 years at a funding level of $15,000 USD per year. Funds may not be used for overhead or to support the investigator’s salary.

View all Future Leader Award Recipients.

Blood Fatty Acid Fingerprint to Predict Risk for Total Mortality

April 4, 2018 in /by

Circulating levels of blood fatty acids are being used to stratify patients into risk categories with regard to the development of chronic disease and death. The fatty acids most clearly associated with reduced risk for cardiovascular disease (CDV) and for death from any cause are the marine omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA. However, these are just two fatty acids representing a single fatty acid family. Is it possible to use all of the information in the 28-fatty acid profile – a “fingerprint”- to more accurately predict risk of mortality?

The aim of this project is to build a valid blood fatty acid fingerprint that predicts risk of total mortality more accurately than the current Framingham Risk Score. The Principal Investigator will use the Framingham Heart Study’s Offspring Cohort to build a blood fatty acid risk predictor for total mortality based on longitudinal data and compare the predictive power with the Framingham Risk Score.

Institution: OmegaQuant, LLC
Principal Investigator: William Harris, PhD
Year Awarded: 2018

Read more: Using an Erythrocyte Fatty Acid Fingerprint to Predict Risk of All-Cause Mortality: the Framingham Offspring Cohort

Learn more about the IAFNS Dietary Lipids Committee.

 

 

Simulating Large-Number Bulk-Product Sampling to Improve Food Safety Sampling Plans

April 4, 2018 in /by

Drawing an accurate conclusion about whether a food ingredient or product is safe based on the result of a test is important to the evaluation and management of food safety risk. It is critical that sampling plans maximize the probability of finding a target hazard in an ingredient or a finished product, particularly with non-uniform and low level contamination. Sample collection in bulk ingredients is typically done manually in the food industry, but manual sampling is time-consuming and laborious, and often results in sampling inconsistency. Therefore, a different approach is needed for rapid and efficient collection of representative samples of these products. The goal of this project is to build a validated and ready-to-use simulation model of bulk product sampling to improving sampling plans.

Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Principal Investigator: Matthew Stasiewicz, PhD
Year Awarded: 2018

Read more: Evaluation of the Impact of Skewness, Clustering, and Probe Sampling Plan on Aflatoxin Detection in Corn

Access the bulk product simulation model

View instructional videos on how to use the model:

View this project on the Center for Open Science’s Open Science Framework.

Learn more about the IAFNS Food Microbiology Committee.

Nutritional and Probiotic Development for the Pre-Term Gut Microbiome

February 16, 2018 in /by

The human intestine is home to dense and diverse communities of microorganisms, referred to as the gut microbiota. Ushered by the revolution in "omics," the microbiota is implicated in numerous health and disease states. Despite the growing recognition of the significance of the microbiota, there are fundamental aspects of the microbiota that are largely unexplored such as a higher order understanding of the interactions between the parts of this ecosystem: the individual members, the environment and host. A deep understanding of early-life, especially pre-term, gut microbial communities and the impact of nutrition is a scientific and public health priority. Preliminary findings suggest that cross-feeding and dependency on the carbohydrate enzymatic capabilities of co-resident members is an underappreciated means of survival in the gut. The goal of this study is to define carbohydrate-based interactions of early-life gut community members towards the goal of developing ecologically-rational, nutrition-based approaches to shape the neonatal microbiome towards health.

Institution:Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital
Principal Investigator: Seth Rakoff-Nahoum, MD, PhD
Year Awarded: 2018

The IAFNS Future Leader Award, given annually to promising nutrition and food scientists, allows new investigators the opportunity to add to an existing project or to conduct exploratory research that might not receive funding from other sources or add to an existing project. Consideration is given to individuals proposing research in the areas of experimental nutrition, nutrition and toxicology, and nutrition and food science. Grants extend for a period of 2 years at a funding level of $15,000 USD per year. Funds may not be used for overhead or to support the investigator’s salary.

View all Future Leader Award Recipients.

Assessing Human Health Impacts of Global Adoption of Codex Deoxynivalenol (DON) Guidelines

February 7, 2018 in /by

Due to climate change, there has been an increase in occurrence of mycotoxins in food and food ingredients. Multiple strategies have been developed to reduce mycotoxin risks before harvest (in the field), after harvest (in storage, transportation, or processing), and in diets. Developed nations have stricter limits for mycotoxins as compared to developing nations. Strict mycotoxin standards mean that developing nations will export their best quality foods and keep more heavily contaminated foods for domestic consumption, resulting in higher mycotoxin exposure in developing countries. Using Deoxynivalenol (DON, vomitoxin) as a case study, this research project will shed light on the potential human health impacts of the new Codex DON regulations on wheat trade worldwide.

Institution: Michigan State University
Principal Investigator: Felicia Wu, PhD
Year Awarded: 2018

Read more: Risk Assessment of Dietary Deoxynivalenol Exposure in Wheat Products Worldwide: Are New Codex DON Guidelines Adequately Protective?

Learn more about the IAFNS Food and Chemical Safety Committee.

Identification And Quantitation Studies of Migrants from BPA Alternative Food-Contact Metal Can Coatings

December 21, 2017 in /by

Different compounds may enter the food supply, by intentional or unintentional addition, at various stages of the food chain. Advancements in analytical methodologies are allowing for progressively lower detection limits, resulting in unexpected and known substances being detected in food and food packaging matrices. Currently, there is no harmonized analytical methodology for the identification of known and unknown substances in food packaging materials. This study is the first step in the overall multi-step risk assessment process for unknown substances in food packaging, and will also be a step towards harmonization & validation of analytical methodology for food packaging materials. The objective of this study is to develop a robust core set of analytical methods that can be utilized for a wide range of food packaging materials to identify known chemicals and potential unknown substances.

Institution: Rutgers University
Principal Investigator: Thomas Hartman, PhD
Year Awarded: 2017

Identification And Quantitation Studies Of Migrants From BPA Alternative Food-Contact Metal Can Coatings

Learn more about the IAFNS Food Packaging Safety Committee.

Evaluation of the Dose-Response for Peanut Allergen

October 18, 2017 in /by

Due to the potentially severe nature of the response and absence of approved treatments, allergic individuals have been advised to avoid the food of concern, and food allergens must be included in the ingredients lists of packaged food. However, with statements such as "may contain allergen X" or "also packaged in a facility that contains allergen Y," it is difficult for consumers, food manufacturers and public health authorities to understand and manage the potential risk of exposures in the food supply. The 2016 National Academy of Sciences Report on Food Allergies provided a series of recommendations, including that regulatory agencies adopt a risk-based approach to identify threshold-based RfDs (Reference Doses) for food allergens. The aim of this project is to to use available data from controlled clinical trials of peanut allergen to conduct a risk-based dose-response analysis to enable establishment of RfDs for peanut allergen.

Institution: University of Cincinnati
Principal Investigator: Lynne Haber, PhD
Year Awarded: 2017

View this project on the Center for Open Science's Open Science Framework.

Learn more about the IAFNS Food and Chemical Safety Committee.

Precision Nutrition: How Combinatory Patterns of SNPs and Nutrition Interact with Mechanistic Elements of Lipid Metabolism

September 1, 2017 in /by

Genetic differences have been shown to explain why blood LDL-cholesterol increases in many people fed dairy fat, but in others this results in a neutral or decreased response LDL response. Likewise, specific genetic modifiers have been shown to predict why cholesterol-lowering plant sterols are highly effective in many people, but not in others. Customizing dietary guidance to those likely to realize benefit is paramount to improving efficacy of dietary recommendations. The aim of this study is to develop a model that predicts the effects of lipid-modulating dietary components using genetic multi-SNP algorithms.

Institution: University of Manitoba
Principal Investigator: Peter Jones, PhD
Year Awarded: 2017

Read more: Common Genetic Variations Involved in the Inter-Individual Variability of Circulating Cholesterol Concentrations in Response to Diets: A Narrative Review of Recent Evidence

Read more: A Combination of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms is Associated with the Interindividual Variability in the Blood Lipid Response to Dietary Fatty Acid Consumption in a Randomized Clinical Trial

Learn more about the IAFNS Dietary Lipids Committee.