Англійська мова

Task 4. Match the word or words with the definition

1. digest a. liquid or secretion

2. malnutrition b. too much or too great

3. fuel c. breathing

4. respiration d. assimilate (food) in the stomach and bowels

5. full-blooded e. grain used for food

6. fluid f. food as a source of energy

7. gravy g. vigorous, hearty, sensual

8. effect h. condition resulting from the lack of foods necessary for health

Task 5. Translate into English

1. Їжа є джерелом енергії для живого організму.

2. Молоко і молочні продукти мають важливе значення в щоденному раціоні людини.

3. Харчові продукти повинні містити білки і вітаміни.

4. В щоденний раціон харчування обов'язково повинні входити вітаміни оскільки їх нестача призводить до різних захворювань.

5. Фрукти і овочі є джерелом вітамінів і мінеральних солей.

6. Житнє борошно містить більше мінеральних солей, жирів, вітамінів, ніж біле і тому більш поживне.

7. Необхідно стежити за тим, щоб в тижневий раціон харчування людини входили всі необхідні для життєдіяльності організму речовини.

Task 6. Answer the questions:

1. What are the main principles of menu making?

2. What is required for the body activity of the adult person?

3. What do the fuel foods contain?

4. What special function have proteins as animal foods?

5. What is the reason of the common diseases?

6. What are the iron sources?

7. What is the role of cellulose in human diet?

8. What tends to intestinal disorders?

Task 7. Read the text and mark these sentence true (T) or false (F).

UKRAINIAN FOOD

Ukrainian cuisine is very varied, and Ukrainians are known for their hospitality. Though more and more cafes, bars and restaurants are opened offering excellent food at reasonable prices, Ukrainians will never miss a chance to invite you to a family gathering. Women gladly spend a lot of time and energy in the kitchen cooking for family and guests. Usually a traditional festive meal begins with a huge number of starters followed by the main course. The aim is to ensure that a guest's plate is never empty!

Borshch is a soup based on beetroot with meat and vegetables: served with sour cream.

Varenyky are ravioli-like pasta stuffed with mushrooms, meat, cottage cheese, potato, cabbage or cherries (as a dessert).

Holoobtsee - cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and vegetable, or with spicy minced meat.

Mlyntsee - pancakes, often made with sour milk.

At the risk of offending vegetarians, a description of the Ukrainian cuisine would be incomplete without salo - pork lard. Spices are rubbed into the skin and the lard then allowed to stand in cold place. It is eaten in salted thin slices with bread. The smoked version is especially delicious.

Ukrainians are very fond of milk and kefeer (sour version of yoghurt). They also like refreshing non-alcoholic kvas made from fermented brown bread. Uzvar is another summer favourite made from stewed fruit and very similar to iced fruit tea.

Ukraine has a tradition of drinking spirits. Horilka is a popular spirit for adults, mostly men. Women enjoy wine, nalyvka (infusion of fruit and horilka) or vyshnivka (especially tasty variety made from cherries).

1. Ukrainians will never miss a chance to invite you to a family gathering

2. borshch is usually served with sour cream

3. at the risk of offending vegetarians, a description of Ukrainian cuisine would be incomplete without pork steak

4. Ukraine has a tradition of drinking wines

5. Coca-cola is a favourite spirit for adults

6. nalyvka is an infusion of fruit and horilka

Task 8. Do you know the following Ukrainian equivalents of the following English idioms. Can you make up any situations to illustrate some of them?

1. it is raining cats and dogs

2. like water off a duck's back

3. be as busy as a bee

4. elbow grease gives the best polish

5. no pains, no gains

6. back-talk

JUST FOR FUN

A young man who was a sports man went into a snack-bar for lunch and took off his overcoat. He knew the kind of people who went to that snack-bar so he took a piece of paper and wrote on it:

“This overcoat belongs to Bill Basher, the famous athlete, he will be back in ten minutes”, and fixed this on the coat.

When he came back, the overcoat wasn't there, but on the paper someone had written:

“Overcoat taken by famous runner. He won't be back at all.”

PART III. TEXTS FOR HOME READING

Text 1. Starfish non-stick drugs

Defence

Starfish have arms, spines and a mouth on the underside of its body. But what scientists are finding really interesting is the sticky goo which is secreted when the Starfish feels threatened. The slime contains properties which may prove invaluable in treating certain kinds of inflammatory illnesses. Dr Charlie Bavington is Managing Director of Glycomar, a marine biotechnology company based at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban. With access to the slimy starfish, he is working with Clive Page, professor of pharmacology at King's College London.

Non-stick

The project, he explains, came out of a chance encounter at a wedding. Scientists from different disciplines were chatting and the idea emerged of 'taking the non-stick properties of starfish and trying to apply it in a medical situation, and asthma was the application'. Because Clive Page is a Respiratory Pharmacologist, they got funding. Dr Bavington got involved early on, having switched from marine biology to clinical biochemistry. 'I was studying the same sort of molecules in starfish as I'd been studying in man, so it wasn't a totally nonsensical connection.'

Inflammatory cells

Bavington left to work elsewhere but when he returned to the project it inspired him to set up a company which connects together the medical application with the marine source. 'We looked at a wide range of applications not just of the slime but also of the actual skin surface. Obviously they are bathed not only in seawater, but in all sorts of bacteria, larvae and barnacles, looking for somewhere to live and settle. Starfish need to have an effective defence and part of that is a kind of non-stick property, including the slime.' He explains that it is similar to where there 'is inflammatory cells circulating around in the blood system and when there is inflammation they stick to the blood vessel wall.' When the cells migrate into the blood vessel wall, into the tissue, they are responsible for the inflammation. If Dr Bavington, Professor Page and the other scientists can regulate the sticking and migrating process then they may have a new class of treatment.

Text 2. Mineral salts

Mineral salt is name for the complete family of salts that are obtained by mining. Natural mineral salts are mined from below the ground surface, at a depth of almost thousands of feet, in areas where there is a layer of mineral salts. Mineral salts can also be harvested by pumping water deep underground in areas where layer of salt is discovered. Mineral salts are added as nutritional additives though they may have other properties like antioxidant or a preservative etc. Many of them are essentials that need to be included in our daily diets, as they are the source of important nutrients required for the body. The important natural mineral salts that should be consumed are sodium, phosphorus, potassium, chlorine, sulphur and calcium. While the above mentioned happen to be the macro elements of the natural mineral salts, the micro elements are the ones that are essential nutrients for the human body. The micro elements in the minerals salts consist of iodine, iron, fluoride and zinc.

Need For Natural Mineral Salts In Human Body

Natural mineral salts are important for the human body because the deficiency of these salts leads to a number of health problems ranging for mild to serious ones. The noticeable health problems related to the deficiency of important minerals salts are insomnia, weakness, fatigue, anemia, osteoporosis, anxiety, depression goiter and a lot of minor problems on a daily basis.

Important mineral salts are found in fruits and vegetables and therefore it is important to include these fruits in out staple diets. Sea food is also rich in a few of these natural mineral salts. To maintain a decent level of mineral salts in the body, a balanced diet is advised.

Applications of Natural Mineral Salts In Food

Table salt or the iodized salt is also important to fill up for the iodine deficiency in certain humans. This prevents goiter and other problems related to the thyroid gland. A minimum quantity of salt should be consumed by men and women on a daily basis. Any more than that, however, can also have adverse effects on human health. Table salt otherwise is used for daily cooking around the world and also as a table condiment.

Some mineral salts are also used as anti-caking agents in food products. They help improve the texture of certain foods as well, especially the meats. They are used in food products like beer, soft drinks, fizzy drinks, confectionery items, ice cream, baked goods, jelly, cheese, breads and canned foods. Mineral salts are also used as preservatives for canned foods and beverages and frozen fish and meat products. Mineral salts might also be used for purifying water.

Text 3. The Carbon Planet

Heat signature

Planets such as Earth have more oxygen than carbon, but what if the composition was reversed? This is a question opened up by a recent discovery of a 'diamond planet' by US and UK scientists, led by Nikku Madhusudhan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and including researchers from Belfast's Queens University and the University of Warwick. The planet is 1200 light years away from earth and was observed using Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope. Dr Marek Kukula of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, whose role is to interpret and comment on astronomical discoveries made by British scientists, explained that researchers initially used the SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) robotic observatories operating continuously, all year around. They detected the planet, then it was observed with the Spitzer Space telescope, which according to Dr Kukula 'detected the heat coming from the planet, and from that heat signature they can tell what this planet is made from.'

Giant planet

The planet is very different to Earth. 'It's a giant planet,' explains Dr Kukula, 'a gas planet, a bit like Jupiter in our solar system. But the interesting thing that they've discovered is that it has a very different composition to the planets in our solar system. So where our planets have a half fraction of oxygen then carbon, this planet has it the other way around, it has more carbon than oxygen.' This suggests that there is more than one way to make a solar system and the range of planets in the Universe could be much wider than previously thought.

Diamonds and graphite

Dr Kukula says that if there are smaller planets in the same solar system with a similar composition, rich in carbon, their rocks could be rich in minerals such as carbon and diamonds, unlike earth which has silica, the sand that rocks on earth are made from. 'This is where this diamond planet idea comes from, they haven't actually detected a diamond planet yet,' explains Dr Kukula, it's hypothetical, 'but you can imagine bizarre landscapes with black graphite rocks lying around and the surface could be covered with tarry liquids rather than water.'

Text 4. Transgenic or Genetically Modified (GM) Plants

Genetic improvement of plants by traditional methods is a long history but recombinant DNA technology has led to revolutionary changes. An effective approach to achieve transgene expression and stability is to transfer the gene directly, into plant genome. It is possible to use genetic engineering to modify plant DNA and then transform plant cells with the DNA by either electroporation or particle gun methods. Alternatively, we can use vectors from the bacterium Agrobacterium Tumefaciens, which can transfer DNA directly into certain plants. It is possible to use plant tissue culture techniques to select clones of plant cells that have been genetically altered using in vitro techniques; then, with proper treatments, induce these cell cultures to make whole plants that can be propagated vegetables lively or by seeds.

In contrast to plants whose properties have been improved by traditional plant genetics, genetically engineered plants are transgenic or genetically modified (GM) plants. Although the techniques to generate transgenic plants or transgenic animals are virtually identical to those used to generate microorganisms expressing foreign genes, the use of the term transgenic is confined to multicellular organisms.

With the use of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a number of transgenic plants have been produced. Most successes have come with broadleaf crop plants (dicots) such as tomato, potato, tobacco, soybean, alfalfa, and cotton. A. tumefaciens has also been used to produce transgenic trees, such as walnut and apple. Transgenic crop plants from the grass family (monocots) have been more difficult to generate using A. tumefaciens, but other methods of introducing DNA are used.

Herbicide resistance is genetically engineered into a crop plant so that it will not be killed by the toxic chemical. A gene encoding a resistant enzyme from Agrobacterium has been cloned, modified for expression in plants, and' transferred into important crop plants, such as soybeans. Genetic engineering has also been used to protect plants from virus infection; expressing the coat protein gene of a virus, interfering with the uncoating of viral particles, and thus interrupting the virus replication cycle. Insect resistance has also been genetically introduced in plants.

Text 5. Nanotechnology - miracle of 21 st Century?

The term 'nanotechnology' encompasses a huge range of activities. 'Nano' is used in the world of science to mean one billionth. E.g. a nanometer is a billionth of a metre. A nanometer is only ten atoms across! So generally nanotechnology is used to mean technology at the nanometer level. Nanotechnology attempts to achieve something useful through the manipulation of matter at this level.

To put it more formally, you can use the following definition: "Nanotechnologies are the design, characterization, production and application of structures, devices and systems by controlling shape and size at nanometer scale." At such scales, the ordinary rules of physics and chemistry no longer apply. For instance, materials' characteristics, such as their colour, strength, conductivity and reactivity, can differ substantially between the nanoscale and the macro. Carbon 'nanotubes' are 100 times stronger than steel but six times lighter.

History. Physicist Richard Feynman gave a lecture to the American Physical Society in 1959 which foresaw advantages from manufacturing on a very small scale - e.g. in integrated circuits for computers, for sequencing genes by reading DNA molecules and using machines to make other machines with increasing precision. However, the term 'nanotechnology' was first used by Norio Taniguchi in 1974, in a talk about how the accuracy of manufacturing had improved over time. He referred to 'nanotechnology' as that which achieved greater dimensional accuracy than lOOnm.

Feynman also envisaged machines that could pick up and place individual atoms. This development of this idea was later assisted by the invention of the scanning probe electron microscope (SPM) which allowed scientists to'see'and manipulate the individual atoms in a surface. In 1989 one of the defining moments in nanotechnology occurred when Don Eigler used a SPM to spell out the letters IBM in xenon atoms. For the first time scientists could put atoms exactly where they wanted them.

Molecular building blocks - Another great leap forward occurred in the shape of a new form of carbon. Harry Kroto from the University of Sussex, together with Richard Smalley and Robert Curl, discovered the carbon 60 molecule, which is shaped like a soccer ball. They named the molecular structure after the similarly shaped geodesic dome structure pioneered by the architect Buckminster Fuller. Unfortunately 'Buckminsterfullerene' is too long a name for most people and so they are often called 'Buckyballs'!

There are two fundamentally different approaches to nanotechnology, termed 'top down' and 'bottom up'. 'Top-down' nanotechnology features the use of micro- and nano-lithography and etching. Here, small features are made by starting with larger

materials (e.g. semi-conductors) and patterning and "carving down" to make nanoscale structures io precise patterns. Complex structures including microprocessors containing hundreds of millions of precisely positioned nanostructures can be fabricated. Of all forms of nanotechnology, this is the most well established.

'Bottom-up', or molecular nanotechnology (MNT), applies to building organic and inorganic structures atom-by-atom, or molecule-by-molecule. Here we are using the forces of nature to assemble nanostructures - the term "self assembly" is often used. The self assembling properties of biological systems, such as DNA molecules, can be used to control the organization of species such as carbon nanotubes, which may ultimately lead to the ability to 'grow' parts of an integrated circuit, rather than having to rely upon expensive 'top-down' techniques. Nanotechnologies are widely seen as having huge potential in areas as diverse as healthcare, IT and energy storage. Governments and businesses across the world have started to invest substantially in their development. However there are also concerns regarding the safety of nanotechnology. These range from the more fanciful (such as Eric Drexler's imagined scenario of a world reduced to "grey goo", caused by self-replicating nano-robots) to the more realistic (such as the possible dangers of foreign nano-particles entering human organs and the bloodstream).

SOME SHORT-TERM NANO USES: Medical diagnostic tools and sensors. Solar energy collection (photovoltaics). Direct hydrogen production. Flexible display technologies and e-paper. Composites containing nanotubes. Glues, paints and lubricants. New forms of computer memory. Printable electronic circuits. Various optical components.

SOME LONGER-TERM NANO USES: Miniaturised data storage systems with capacities comparable to whole libraries' stocks. PCs with the power of today's computer centres. Chips that contain movies with more than 1,000 hours of playing time. Replacements for human tissues and organs. Cheap hydrogen storage possibilities for a regenerative energy economy. Lightweight plastic windows with hard transparent protective layers.

Ever since John Dalton convinced the world of the existence of atoms in 1803, scientists have wanted to do things with them. Nanotechnology takes that ability on to a new plane and opens up all kinds of futuristic imaginings. Essentially, nanotech is manipulation at the molecular scale - distances that may cover just a few millionths of a millimetre. But its potential is not just about being able to miniaturise things. Indeed, scientists and engineers recognise that there are fundamental limits to pure miniaturisation. Working at a scale a million times smaller than a pinhead allows researchers to "tune" material properties, making them behave in different ways to normal, large- scale solids. This behaviour can be exploited in quite ground-breaking ways.

Nature has been doing nanotechnology for a long time, and it has become expert in it. Consider the super-fine hairs on a gecko's feet which allow it to stick to walls and even hang upside down on a glass sheet. Learning from nature, nanotechnology promises humans ways of making systems that are smaller, lighter, stronger, more efficient, but cheaper to produce. "Nanotechnology is not a technology in its own right," explained Professor Mark Welland, head of the University of Cambridge Nanoscale Science Laboratory. "It is an enabling technology, so it will appear in many different products. It is already appearing in flash memory, computer chips, and it will increasingly be an enabling technology in other products like coatings, new types of sensors, especially in the medical area."

It is expected to transform the performance of materials, like polymers, electronics, paints, batteries, sensors, fuel cells, solar cells, coatings, computers and display systems. In five years'time, batteries that only last three days will be laughable, said Professor Welland. Similarly, in 10 years' time, the way medical testing is done now will be considered crude. To say that in five years, an iPod will have 10 times its current storage capacity will be conservative, he said. In the not-so-distant future, a terabit of data - equivalent to 10 hours of fine quality uncompressed video - will be stored on an area the size of a postage stamp. Clearly, the devices themselves will not be nano-sized. But nanotechnology will play its part in shrinking components! and making them work together a lot more efficiently. Although nano-devices can be built atom by atom, it is not realistic as a manufacturing option because it is slow and expensive, thinks Professor John Ryan, head of the Bionanotechnology Centre at Oxford University. "One of the major scientific challenges in the years ahead is to understand the fundamental biological principles and apply them to produce new types of nanotechnology," he said. "Armed with these design rules it may then be possible to make new types of nano- device using materials that are more robust than bio-materials."

The Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering has looked at current and future developments in nanotechnology and has reported on whether it will require new controls. It is hoped that the report grounds some unrealistic scenarios, while recognising that real concerns need to be addressed with regulation. "The one fantastical idea that has dogged nartotechnology is the self-replicating machine, the 'grey goo', scenario," said Professor Welland. "That is simply too far off. The complexity of designing a molecular machine is bad enough, but if you try to imbue that with self-replication, you could not even put a toe in the water to design it." The scenario sees swarms of self-replicating robots, smaller than viruses, multiplying uncontrollably and devouring Earth. Eric Drexler, who many consider to be a "father of nanotechnology", has distanced himself from the idea, saying such self- replicating nanomachines are unlikely to be widespread. Similarly, fears over "green goo", the concern that self-replicating, nano-sized biological particles will move into human bodies and do unpredictable things, is scaremongering, thinks Professor Welland.

Professor Ryan agrees: “These science fiction scenarios have not only diverted attention away from the real advantages of nanotechnology, but also from issues that do raise concern”. Inhaled nanoparticles found in the bloodstream which have dispersed throughout the brain is a concern, he says. Whether this poses a health risk is not known. "If you look around at the moment in a big city, a significant proportion of material that you breathe in is already particulates - and a proportion of that is nano-sized, like diesel emissions," said Professor Welland.

Nano-materials exploit unusual electrical, optical and other properties because of the very precise way in which their atoms are arranged. This means fabrics could change colour electronically. Exposing an army uniform to ultra-violet light could activate changes without undressing. But it is in medicine that nanotechnology offers the most remarkable advances, according to Professor Ryan. "Nanomedicine will provide earlier and better diagnostics and treatment will combine earlier and more precisely targeted drug delivery," he said. The possibility of individualised therapy is also on the horizon. Nanotechnology in the form of flexible films containing miniaturised electrodes is expected to improve the performance of retinal, cochlear and neural implants. And it could lead to the miniaturisation of medical diagnostic and sensing tools which could drive down costs of such kits for developing countries. In this respect, nanotechnology could enable developing nations to leapfrog older technologies, in the way that copper wire and optical fibre telephony were superseded by mobile phones.

Industrial giants like GE are heavily involved in developing nanotechnology, 'We think that the biggest breakthroughs in nanotechnology are going to be in the new materials that are developed," said Troy Kirkpatrick at GE Global Research. These include corrosion-resistant coatings to make hydro-electric turbines more efficient in heavily-silted waters, and nano- membrane water filters to make for faster filtration. GE is also studying the properties of nano-ceramics, which can offer extreme strength, while still being lightweight. Because of the molecular structure of such materials, nano-ceramic coatings on aircraft could make them 10% more efficient, so less energy is used, producing fewer emissions.

GE Global Research is also looking to the electronics industry. "If you look at the chip makers of the world, the challenge they have is not to figure out how tb make them faster. The problem is they run so fast* the chips generate too much heat and melt. They need better materials for heat management," said Mr Kirkpatrick. Using materials which exploit properties of nanoparticles, GE has developed chip adhesives that can transfer heat out of the processor system more efficiently. "It is a start, and it is to show nanotechnology is finding its way into production and is changing the way we are doing science," said Mr Kirkpatrick.

Whatever nanotechnology does for the future, it will be an evolutionary process. One certainty is that there remains a plethora of uncertainties in the emerging field of nanotechnology. “Medical sensing is very attractive to everybody, but there could be a downside," explained Professor Welland. “If medical sensors become ubiquitous, our physical state could be monitored 24 hours a day, and if someone hacked into that data, there could be concerns”. “Which is indeed why regulation has to be addressed, but must not stifle nanotechnology's potential. One of the important things for me is that it ultimately means the most efficient use of materials and processes, which means it does not have to benefit just the G8 nations” argued Professor Welland. "These sorts of materials, if they are able to do their job using less energy, should be available to everybody."

Text 6. Food supplements in the USA

In the United States, a dietary supplement is defined under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994[10] (DSHEA) as a product that is intended to supplement the diet and contains any of the following dietary ingredients:

a vitamin, a mineral, a herb or other botanical (excluding tobacco), an amino acid

a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any of the above

Furthermore, it must also conform to the following criteria:

intended for ingestion in pill, capsule, tablet, powder or liquid form

not represented for use as a conventional food or as the sole item of a meal or diet

labeled as a "dietary supplement"

The hormones DHEA (a steroid), pregnenolone (also a steroid) and the pineal hormone melatonin are marketed as dietary supplements in the US.

Regulation

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates dietary supplements as a category of foods, and not as drugs. While pharmaceutical companies are required to obtain FDA approval which involves assessing the risks and benefits prior to their entry into the market, dietary supplements do not need to be pre-approved by FDA before they can enter the market. Instead, manufacturers and distributors who wish to market dietary supplements that contain a "new dietary ingredient" (defined as "a vitamin; a mineral; a herb or other botanical; an amino acid; a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing total dietary intake; or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any of the above dietary ingredients" not marketed before October 15, 1994) must notify the FDA beforehand. The notification requires information indicating the ingredient is safe, and the ingredient can not be marketed (sold or delivered for sale) for seventy-five days following filing the information. During this time the agency reviews the information for adequacy and safety concerns; fifteen days after the this period (ninety days after the information was filed) the FDA posts nonproprietary information on their website. Listing the information means the ingredient can be marketed, but does not mean it is necessarily safe. [14] On September 24, 2007 the FDA has implemented a "current good manufacturing practices" policy to ensure dietary supplements "are produced in a quality manner, do not contain contaminants or impurities, and are accurately labeled" and covers the manufacturing, packaging, labelling and storing of supplements, with requirements for quality control, design and construction of manufacturing plants, testing of ingredients and final products, record keeping and complaints processes.

The DSHEA, passed in 1994, was the subject of lobbying efforts by the manufacturers of dietary supplements and restricted the ability of the FDA to exert authority over supplements so long as manufacturers made no claims about their products treating, preventing or curing diseases. According to Consumer Reports, "The law has left consumers without the protections surrounding the manufacture and marketing of over-the-counter or prescription medications" and it became the FDA's responsibility to prove that a supplement wasn't safe. While pharmaceutical manufacturers must demonstrate their products are effective as well as being safe, supplement manufacturers are not required to demonstrate efficacy. The FDA has only ever found one dietary supplement to be unsafe, the weight loss/energy supplement ephedra. Discussing the legislation, Time referred to the DSHEA as "ill- conceived and reprehensible", that "gives the industry virtually free reign [sic] to market products defined as dietary supplements, while severely limiting the FDA's ability to regulate them".The DSHEA was heavily lobbied for by the supplement industry, and was criticized for exposing the public to worthless compounds that bilked consumers out of money to no benefit. Because of the requirements put into place by the DSFIEA, the FDA must demonstrate that individual supplements are unsafe using their adverse events reporting system, which it is estimated captures only 1% of all adverse events linked to supplements, [citation needed] The FDA has also lacked the funding to undertake the rigorous tests to meet the standards for a supplement to be considered "hazardous" and thus removed from the market; in the one situation where this standard was reached (ephedra), the agency faced significant opposition from the supplement industry and the United States Congress, instead limiting themselves to making announcements about problematic supplement safety records on their website.

A 2001 study, published in Archives of Internal Medicine, found broad public support for greater governmental regulation of dietary supplements than was currently permitted by DSHEA. The researchers found that a majority of Americans supported pre-marketing approval by the FDA, increased oversight of harmful supplements, and greater scrutiny of the truthfulness of supplement label claims.

Text 7. Food additives

Food additives can be divided into several groups, although there is some overlap between them.

Acids

Food acids are added to make flavors "sharper", and also act as preservatives and antioxidants. Common food acids include vinegar, citric acid, tartaric acid, malic acid, fumaric acid, and lactic acid.

Acidity regulators

Acidity regulators are used to change or otherwise control the acidity and alkalinity of foods.

Anticaking agents

Anticaking agents keep powders such as milk powder from caking or sticking.

Antifoaming agents

Antifoaming agents reduce or prevent foaming in foods.

Antioxidants

Antioxidants such as vitamin C act as preservatives by inhibiting the effects of oxygen on food, and can be beneficial to health.

Bulking agents

Bulking agents such as starch are additives that increase the bulk of a food without affecting its nutritional value.

Food coloring

Colorings are added to food to replace colors lost during preparation, or to make food look more attractive.

Color retention agents

In contrast to colorings, color retention agents are used to preserve a food's existing color.

Emulsifiers

Emulsifiers allow water and oils to remain mixed together in an emulsion, as in mayonnaise, ice cream, and homogenized milk.

Flavors

Flavors are additives that give food a particular taste or smell, and may be derived from natural ingredients or created artificially.

Flavor enhancers

Flavor enhancers enhance a food's existing flavors. They may be extracted from natural sources (through distillation, solvent extraction, maceration, among other methods) or created artificially.

Flour treatment agents

Flour treatment agents are added to flour to improve its color or its use in baking.

Glazing agents

Glazing agents provide a shiny appearance or protective coating to foods.

Humectants

Humectants prevent foods from drying out.

Tracer gas

Tracer gas allows for package integrity testing to prevent foods from being exposed to atmosphere, thus guaranteeing shelf life.

Preservatives

Preservatives prevent or inhibit spoilage of food due to fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms.

Stabilizers

Stabilizers, thickeners and gelling agents, like agar or pectin (used in jam for example) give foods a firmer texture. While they are not true emulsifiers, they help to stabilize emulsions.

Sweeteners

Sweeteners are added to foods for flavoring. Sweeteners other than sugar are added to keep the food energy (calories) low, or because they have beneficial effects for diabetes mellitus and tooth decay and diarrhea.

Thickeners

Thickeners are substances which, when added to the mixture, increase its viscosity without substantially modifying its other properties.

Safety

With the increasing use of processed foods since the 19th century, there has been a great increase in the use of food additives of varying levels of safety. This has led to legislation in many countries regulating their use. For example, boric acid was widely used as a food preservative from the 1870s to the 1920s, but was banned after World War I due to its toxicity, as demonstrated in animal and human studies. During World War II the urgent need for cheap, available food preservatives led to it being used again, but it was finally banned in the 1950s. Such cases led to a general mistrust of food additives, and an application of the precautionary principle led to the conclusion that only additives that are known to be safe should be used in foods. In the USA, this led to the adoption of the Delaney clause, an amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, stating that no carcinogenic substances may be used as food additives. However, after the banning of cyclamates in the USA and Britain in 1969, saccharin, the only remaining legal artificial sweetener at the time, was found to cause cancer in rats. Widespread public outcry in the USA, partly communicated to Congress by postage-paid postcards supplied in the packaging of sweetened soft drinks, led to the retention of saccharin despite its violation of the Delaney clause.

In September 2007, research financed by Britain's Food Standards Agency and published online by the British medical journal The Lancet, presented evidence that a mix of additives commonly found in children's foods increases the mean level of hyperactivity. The team of researchers concluded that "the finding lends strong support for the case that food additives exacerbate hyperactive behaviors (inattention, impulsivity and overactivity) at least into middle childhood." That study examined the effect of artificial colors and a sodium benzoate preservative, and found both to be problematic for some children. Further studies are needed to find out whether there are other additives that could have a similar effect, and it is unclear whether some disturbances can also occur in mood and concentration in some adults. In the February 2008 issue of its publication, AAP Grand Rounds, the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that a low-additive diet is a valid intervention for children with ADHD:

"Although quite complicated, this was a carefully conducted study in which the investigators went to great lengths to eliminate bias and to rigorously measure outcomes. The results are hard to follow and somewhat inconsistent. For many of the assessments there were small but statistically significant differences of measured behaviors in children who consumed the food additives compared with those who did not. In each case increased hyperactive behaviors were associated with consuming the additives. For those comparisons in which no statistically significant differences were found, there was a trend for more hyperactive behaviors associated with the food additive drink in virtually every assessment. Thus, the overall findings of the study are clear and require that even we skeptics, who have long doubted parental claims of the effects of various foods on the behavior of their children, admit we might have been wrong."

In 2007, Food Standards Australia New Zealand published an official shoppers' guidance with which the concerns of food additives and their labeling are mediated.

There has been significant controversy associated with the risks and benefits of food additives. Some artificial food additives have been linked with cancer, digestive problems, neurological conditions, ADHD, heart disease or obesity. Natural additives may be similarly harmful or be the cause of allergic reactions in certain individuals. For example, safrole was used to flavor root beer until it was shown to be carcinogenic. Due to the application of the Delaney clause, it may not be added to fo Red 3, and Yellow 6 are among the food colorings that have been linked to various health risks. Blue 1 is used to color candy, soft drinks, and pastries and there has been some evidence that it may cause cancer. Blue 2 can be found in pet food, soft drinks, and pastries, and has shown to cause brain tumors in mice. Red 3, mainly used in cherries for cocktails has been correlated with thyroid tumors in rats and humans as well. Yellow 6, used in sausages, gelatin, and candy can lead to the attribution of gland and kidney tumors and contains carcinogens, but in minimal amounts.

Text 8. Food preservation

Preservation processes include:

Heating to kill or denature micro-organisms (e.g. boiling)

Oxidation (e.g. use of sulfur dioxide)

Toxic inhibition (e.g. smoking, use of carbon dioxide, vinegar, alcohol etc.)

Dehydration (drying)

Osmotic inhibition (e.g. use of syrups)

Low temperature inactivation (e.g. freezing)

Ultra high water pressure (e.g. fresherized, a kind of "cold" pasteurization, the pressure kills naturally occurring pathogens, which cause food deterioration and affect food safety.)

Combinations of these methods

Drying

Main article: Drying (food)

One of the oldest methods of food preservation is by drying, which reduces water activity sufficiently to prevent or delay bacterial growth.

Refrigeration

Refrigeration preserves food by slowing down the growth and reproduction of microorganisms and the action of enzymes which cause food to rot. The introduction of commercial and domestic refrigerators drastically improved the diets of many in the Western world by allowing foods such as fresh fruit, salads and dairy products to be stored safely for longer periods, particularly during warm weather.

Main article: Frozen food

Freezing is also one of the most commonly used processes commercially and domestically for preserving a very wide range of food including prepared food stuffs which would not have required freezing in their unprepared state. For example, potato waffles are stored in the freezer, but potatoes themselves require only a cool dark place to ensure many months' storage. Cold stores provide large volume, long- term storage for strategic food stocks held in case of national emergency in many countries.

Heat treating

Main articles: Thermization, Pasteurization, and Sterilization (microbiology). This section requires expansion.

Vacuum packing

Vacuum-packing stores food in a vacuum environment, usually in an air-tight bag or bottle. The vacuum environment strips bacteria of oxygen needed for survival, slowing spoiling. Vacuum-packing is commonly used for storing nuts to reduce loss of flavor from oxidation.

Salt

Salting or curing draws moisture from the meat through a process of osmosis. Meat is cured with salt or sugar, or a combination of the two. Nitrates and nitrites are also often used to cure meat and contribute the characteristic pink color, as well as inhibition of Clostridium botulinum.

Sugar

Sugar is used to preserve fruits, either in syrup with fruit such as apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums or in crystallized form where the preserved material is cooked in sugar to the point of crystallisation and the resultant product is then stored dry. This method is used for the skins of citrus fruit (candied peel), angelica and ginger. A modification of this process produces glacй fruit such as glacй cherries where the fruit is preserved in sugar but is then extracted from the syrup and sold, the preservation being maintained by the sugar content of the fruit and the superficial coating of syrup. The use of sugar is often combined with alcohol for preservation of luxury products such as fruit in brandy or other spirits. These should not be confused with fruit flavored spirits such as cherry brandy or Sloe gin.

Artificial food additives

Preservative food additives can be antimicrobial; which inhibit the growth of bacteria or fungi, including mold, or antioxidant; such as oxygen absorbers, which inhibit the oxidation of food constituents.

Freezing

Common antimicrobial preservatives include calcium propionate, sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, sulfites (sulfur dioxide, sodium bisulfite, potassium hydrogen sulfite, etc.) and disodium EDTA. Antioxidants include BHA and BHT. Other preservatives include formaldehyde (usually in solution), glutaraldehyde (kills insects), ethanol and methylchloroisothiazolinone.

Pickling

Pickling is a method of preserving food in an edible anti-microbial liquid. Pickling can be broadly categorized as chemical pickling for example, In chemical pickling, the food is placed in an edible liquid that inhibits or kills bacteria and other microorganisms. Typical pickling agents include brine (high in salt), vinegar, alcohol, and vegetable oil, especially olive oil but also many other oils. Many chemical pickling processes also involve heating or boiling so that the food being preserved becomes saturated with the pickling agent. Common chemically pickled foods include cucumbers, peppers, corned beef, herring, and eggs, as well mixed vegetables such as piccalilli.

In fermentation pickling, the food itself produces the preservation agent, typically by a process that produces lactic acid. Fermented pickles include sauerkraut, nukazuke, kimchi, surstromming, and curtido. Some pickled cucumbers are also fermented.

In commercial pickles, a preservative like sodium benzoate or EDTA may also be added to enhance shelf life.

Lye

Sodium hydroxide (lye) makes food too alkaline for bacterial growth. Lye will saponify fats in the food, which will change its flavor and texture. Lutefisk uses lye in its preparation, as do some olive recipes. Modern recipes for century eggs also call for lye. Masa harina and hominy use agricultural lime in their preparation and this is often misheard as 'lye'.

Canning and bottling preserved food

Canning involves cooking food, sealing it in sterile cans or jars, and boiling the containers to kill or weaken any remaining bacteria as a form of sterilization. It was invented by Nicolas Appert. Foods have varying degrees of natural protection against spoilage and may require that the final step occur in a pressure cooker. High-acid fruits like strawberries require no preservatives to can and only a short boiling cycle, whereas marginal fruits such as tomatoes require longer boiling and addition of other acidic elements. Low acid foods, such as vegetables and meats require pressure canning. Food preserved by canning or bottling is at immediate risk of spoilage once the can or bottle has been opened.

Spam is a canned and preserved meat product.

Lack of quality control in the canning process may allow ingress of water or microorganisms. Most such failures are rapidly detected as decomposition within the can causes gas production and the can will swell or burst. However, there have been examples of poor manufacture (underprocessing) and poor hygiene allowing contamination of canned food by the obligate anaerobe Clostridium botulinum, which produces an acute toxin within the food, leading to severe illness or death. This organism produces no gas or obvious taste and remains undetected by taste or smell. Its toxin is denatured by cooking, though. Cooked mushrooms, handled poorly and then canned, can support the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, which produces a toxin that is not destroyed by canning or subsequent reheating.

Jellying

Food may be preserved by cooking in a material that solidifies to form a gel. Such materials include gelatine, agar, maize flour and arrowroot flour. Some foods naturally form a protein gel when cooked such as eels and elvers, and sipunculid worms which are a delicacy in the town of Xiamen in Fujian province of the People's Republic of China. Jellied eels are a delicacy in the East End of London where they are eaten with mashed potatoes. Potted meats in aspic, (a gel made from gelatine and clarified meat broth) were a common way of serving meat off-cuts in the UK until the 1950s. Many jugged meats are also jellied.

Potting

A traditional British way of preserving meat (particularly shrimp) is by setting it in a pot and sealing it with a layer of fat. Also common is potted chicken liver; compare pвtй.

Jugging

Meat can be preserved by jugging, the process of stewing the meat (commonly game or fish) in a covered earthenware jug or casserole. The animal to be jugged is usually cut into pieces, placed into a tightly-sealed jug with brine or gravy, and stewed. Red wine and/or the animal's own blood is sometimes added to the cooking liquid. Jugging was a popular method of preserving meat up until the middle of the 20th century.

Irradiation

Irradiation of food is the exposure of food to ionizing radiation; either high-energy electrons or X-rays from accelerators, or by gamma rays (emitted from radioactive sources as Cobalt-60 or Caesium-13 7). The treatment has a range of effects, including killing bacteria, molds and insect pests, reducing the ripening and spoiling of fruits, and at higher doses inducing sterility. The technology may be compared to pasteurization; it is sometimes called 'cold pasteurization', as the product is not heated. Irradiation is not effective against viruses or prions, it cannot eliminate toxins already formed by microorganisms, and is only useful for food of high initial quality.Nitrogen gas (N2) at concentrations of 98% or higher is also used effectively to kill insects in grain through hypoxia. However, carbon dioxide has an advantage in this respect as it kills organisms through hypercarbia and depending on concentration hypoxia and, requiring concentrations of above 35%, or so. This makes carbon dioxide preferable for fumigation in situations where a hermetic seal cannot be maintained.

Burial of in the ground

Burial of food can preserve it due to a variety of factors: lack of light, lack of oxygen, cool temperatures, pH level, or desiccants in the soil. Burial may be combined with other methods such as salting or fermentation.Many root vegetables are very resistant to spoilage and require no other preservation than storage in cool dark conditions, for example by burial in the ground, such as in a storage clamp.Century eggs are created by placing eggs in alkaline mud (or other alkaline substance) resulting in their "inorganic" fermentation through raised pH instead of spoiling. The fermentation preserves them and breaks down some of the complex, less flavorful proteins and fats into simpler more flavorful ones.

Most foods can be preserved in soil that is very dry and salty (thus a desiccant), or soil that is frozen.

Cabbage was traditionally buried in the fall in northern farms in the USA for preservation. Some methods keep it crispy while other methods produce sauerkraut [citation needed]. A similar process is used in the traditional production of kimchi.

Sometimes meat is buried under conditions which cause preservation. If buried on hot coals or ashes, the heat can kill pathogens, the dry ash can desiccate, and the earth can block oxygen and further contamination. If buried where the earth is very cold, the earth acts like a refrigerator.