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Lead exposure is toxic even at low levels, resulting in impairments that can affect a child's lifelong success. In North Carolina, testing for lead is encouraged for all children at ages 1 and 2 years and required for children covered by Medicaid; investigations are performed to identify potential exposure sources for children with blood lead levels (BLLs) ≥5 μg/dL. During June--August 2023, routine lead testing identified four asymptomatic North Carolina children with BLLs ≥5 μg/dL. Home investigations identified only WanaBana brand apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches as a potential exposure source; product samples contained 1.9--3.0 ppm of lead. An expanded nationwide investigation led to identification of approximately 500 cases of childhood lead exposure believed to be linked to consumption of apple cinnamon purees, including 22 cases in North Carolina. Fewer than one half (45%) of the 22 North Carolina cases were among children covered by Medicaid. A coordinated multiagency communication strategy was implemented in North Carolina to notify consumers of the hazard and provide recommendations for preventing further exposure. The Food and Drug Administration issued a nationwide public health advisory on October 28, 2023; 2 days later, the manufacturer issued a voluntary recall. Routine testing of young children for lead exposure, combined with thorough environmental investigations, can identify emerging sources of lead exposure and limit further harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research was to assess the effects of fruit purees of banana, kiwi, mango, red berry, and strawberry on the microbiological, physicochemical, antioxidant, and sensory properties of sheep yogurt. The fruit purees were characterized for their microbiological profile before yogurt production, and no spoilage or pathogenic microorganisms were detected in any of the purees analyzed. Yogurt productions were carried out under industrial conditions using pasteurized sheep's milk and selected starter cultures of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. Five experimental yogurt productions (EYP) were made by adding 10 % (w/w) of each fruit puree, while the control yogurt production (CYP) was puree-free. Plate counts revealed that levels of viable Lb. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus exceeded 8.0 log cfu/g in all CYP and EYP samples after 3 d of refrigerated storage. The addition of fruit purees reduced fat percentage until to 7 % and increased of antioxidant activity, especially with red berry puree. Except for banana, the addition of fruit purees resulted in a statistically significant increase (p

Background: Camel milk (CM) and its fermentation products have acclaimed nutritional and health benefits, although they are often associated with low marketability because of a unique flavor, which is unpleasant to certain consumers. Incorporating fruit purees is an attractive method of adding a pleasant taste and masking the undesirable flavor in such dairy products. Methods: We investigated the effects of supplementing plain fermented CM laban with pectin (0.2%) and a fruit puree (apricot, blueberry, mango, peach, pineapple, or strawberry) of varying concentrations (0%, 5%, 15%, and 25%) on the products' physicochemical, rheological, antioxidant, and sensory properties. The labans were analyzed for dry matter content, color (L*, a*, b*), pH, titratable acidity, and rheology. Total phenolic content and antioxidant property were determined using Folin–Ciocalteu and ABTS methods and sensory profile was studied using quantitative descriptive analysis. Results and discussion: The labans fortified with 15% and 25% purees had higher dry matter content than the control samples. Addition of fruit purees darkened the color of the laban samples and lowered the L* value but did not affect their titratable acidity, except for the apricot puree. Labans containing blueberry, pineapple, and strawberry purees had higher whey-off than those containing peach, apricot, mango, or the control samples. The storage and loss moduli, and viscosity values of laban samples supplemented with peach or pineapple puree (at 15% and 25%, and at 25%, respectively) were increased compared to the other samples. The power law model sufficiently explained the flow of all labans, indicating a shear-thinning behavior. The addition of purees increased the total phenolic content and antioxidant activities of all labans, while peach puree in particular, improved the sensory quality of the CM laban, owing to its high fiber and protein content and low total soluble solids. Conclusion: A 25% peach puree significantly improved all sensory properties of CM labans.

In this study, baby formulas, follow-on formulas, cereal-based supplementary foods, fruit purees, vegetable purees, menus and mixtures, rice pudding and milk pudding, snacks, and beverages were investigated to determine the presence of various pathogenic bacteria and their hygienic qualities. The antibiotic resistance of isolates was determined by disc diffusion method. In the samples examined, Enterobacteriaceae, coliform, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, mold, and yeast contamination levels were found to be 42.96%, 0.74%, 2.22%, 0.74%, 23.70%, and 2.96%, respectively. The presence of Pantoea spp. (2.96%), Klebsiella pneumonia (5.19%), Enterobacter cloacae (0.74%), Serratia plymuthica (0.74%), Sphingomonas paucimobilis (0.74%), Bacillus pumilus (0.74%), Staphylococcus hominis (2.96%), Staphylococcus epidermidis (2.96%), Enterococcus casseliflavus (2.96%), and Enterococcus faecium (0.74%) was also found in analyzed samples. Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli O157:H7, E. coli, Cronobacter sakazakii, and sulfite-reducing anaerobic bacteria were not found in any sample. Pantoea spp., K. pneumonia, E. cloacae, S. paucimobilis, B. cereus, S. hominis, and S. epidermidis isolates showed multiple resistance to three or more antibiotics. The determination of multiple antibiotic resistance in some isolates with the presence of pathogen and potential pathogenic bacteria was found to be important in terms of public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the effect of intake of fruit purees (guava-strawberry, guava-blackberry, guava-soursop, guava-passion fruit) by diabetic rats on reduction of plasma glucose and inflammation biomarkers was evaluated. Consumption of fruit purees in addition to a standard diet was associated with a reduction in body weight (20%), control of glucose metabolism, by decreasing plasma glucose (62.1%). We found a significant reduction in activities of alanine aminotransferase (49.41%), alkaline phosphatase (57.25%) and ϒ-glutamyl transferase (76%), which are useful markers of inflammatory process in the liver. Purees did not alter lipid metabolism and a remarkable improvement in liver morphology was observed. The diets order with the best beneficial effects was diet supplemented with guava-blackberry > guava-strawberry > guava-passion fruit > guava-soursop fruit. Consumption of fruit purees represent a therapeutic alternative by diabetic individuals.

Fruit purees can be added to diet as alternative sources of bioactive compounds for the prevention and/or improvement of the complications of metabolic syndrome. In this work we evaluated the effect of the intake of low-fat diets enriched with fruit purees (guava-strawberry, guava-blackberry, guava-soursop, guava-passion fruit) on the body weight and biochemical markers in metabolic syndrome analogy (MSA)-induced rats. The rats (n=6 for each treatment) were induced with a high fat diet and were injected with streptozotocin, one dose every week for 4 consecutive weeks after fasting overnight, then healthy rats were fed with standard diet and MS rats were fed with standard diet plus each of the fruit puree, for 4 weeks. As novel findings, the diet enriched with fruit purees was associated with a reduction in body weight (~13-21 %) and a control in the metabolism of glucose by decreasing plasma glucose (~59-63 %). Also, there was a reduction in the total cholesterol, triacylglycerols, low-density lipoproteins, and low enzymatic activities of alanine aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase and γ-glutamyl transferase, useful metabolites in the control of inflammatory processes in the liver. A notable improvement in the liver morphology was observed indicating that the treatments had a hepatoprotective effect. The diet enriched with guava-blackberry puree caused the best results on most biochemical markers of MS rats. Therefore, diets enriched with fruit purees can be an alternative for MS individuals for the control and improvement of the complications caused by this syndrome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the effect of intake of fruit purees (guava-strawberry, guava-blackberry, guava-soursop, guava-passion fruit) by diabetic rats on reduction of plasma glucose and inflammation biomarkers was evaluated. Consumption of fruit purees in addition to a standard diet was associated with a reduction in body weight (20%), control of glucose metabolism, by decreasing plasma glucose (62.1%). We found a significant reduction in activities of alanine aminotransferase (49.41%), alkaline phosphatase (57.25%) and ϒ-glutamyl transferase (76%), which are useful markers of inflammatory process in the liver. Purees did not alter lipid metabolism and a remarkable improvement in liver morphology was observed. The diets order with the best beneficial effects was diet supplemented with guava-blackberry > guava-strawberry > guava-passion fruit > guava-soursop fruit. Consumption of fruit purees represent a therapeutic alternative by diabetic individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a comparative study of the effectiveness of deep neural networks (DNNs) in the classification of pure and impure purees is conducted. Three different types of deep neural networks (DNNs)—the Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), the Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), and the temporal convolutional network (TCN)—are employed for the detection of adulteration of strawberry purees. The Strawberry dataset, a time series spectroscopy dataset from the UCR time series classification repository, is utilized to evaluate the performance of different DNNs. Experimental results demonstrate that the TCN is able to obtain a higher classification accuracy than the GRU and LSTM. Moreover, the TCN achieves a new state-of-the-art classification accuracy on the Strawberry dataset. These results indicates the great potential of using the TCN for the detection of adulteration of fruit purees in the future.

Objectives: This study examined the effect of a 10 and 20% meal price increase when choosing French fries and a 10 and 20% meal price reduction when choosing fruit for dessert on university students’ purchasing behaviour in an on-campus restaurant. The moderating effect of gender was also investigated. Secondly, this study aimed at gaining further insight into reasons why these price manipulations did or did not change students’ purchasing behaviour. Materials and Methods: This two-phased mixed-methods study was conducted in a Belgian on-campus university restaurant with approximately 1200 to 1300 student visitors per day. In a first phase (French fries experiment), data were collected during a control week (no price manipulation) and two separate intervention weeks (10 and 20% meal price increase when students chose French fries). In a second phase (fruit experiment), following the same protocol but carried out a few weeks later, meal prices were reduced by 10 and 20% when students chose fruit for dessert. French fries and fruit sale counts relative to the total number of items sold were used as outcome measure. Short interviews were conducted in convenient subsamples of student customers to assess influences on food choice. Key findings: Increasing the meal price by 10 and 20% when choosing French fries was associated with respective 10.9 and 21.8% absolute reductions in French fries purchases, while reducing the meal price by 10 and 20% when choosing fruit for dessert was associated with absolute increases in fruit purchases of respectively 25.1 and 42.4% (all p<0.001). No moderating effect of gender was detected. Besides price, food/taste preference, eating habits, health, availability and accessibility, and body satisfaction influenced students’ food choices, with taste being the most frequently mentioned factor. Significance: Pricing may be a promising strategy to improve university students’ eating behaviour. The likelihood of intervention success may increase when combining pricing strategies with offering healthy, tasty and meal matching starchy alternatives to French fries and offering a variety of fresh and appealing fruits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High pressure processing (HPP) can inactivate pathogens and retain fruit qualities. Elevated HPP pressure or time increases virus inactivation, but the effect of temperature is not consistently observed for norovirus and hepatitis A virus. In the present study, the effectiveness of HPP holding temperatures (<40°C) and pressures were evaluated for inactivating surrogates (murine norovirus [MNV] and MS2 coliphage) in pomegranate and strawberry juices and strawberry puree using a 24-liter HPP system. The holding temperature was established by setting the HPP initial temperature via pretrials. All trials were able to arrive at the designated holding pressure and holding temperature simultaneously. MNV inactivation in juices was conducted at 300 MPa for 3 min with various holding temperatures (10 to 30°C). A regression equation was derived, Y = 0.08 × X + 2.6 log PFU, R2 = 0.96, where Y is the log reduction and X is the holding temperature. The equation was used to predict a 2.6-log reduction in juices at 0°C holding temperature and indicated that MNV inactivation was inversely proportional to temperature increase. MNV survival during HPP did not differ significantly in pomegranate and strawberry juices. However, MS2 coliphage inactivation was greater as the holding temperature increased (from 15 to 38°C) at 600 MPa for 3 min. The increased inactivation trend is presumably similar to that for hepatitis A virus, but the holding temperature was not correlated with the reduction of HPPresistant MS2 in strawberry puree. When the HPP holding pressure was evaluated independently in strawberry puree, a 5-log reduction of MNV was predicted through regression analysis at the holding pressure of 424 MPa for 3 min at 20°C. These parameters should inactivate >5 log PFU of MNV in juices, based upon a greater inactivation in berry juice than in puree (1.16-versus 0.74-log reduction at 300 MPa). This research illustrates use of predictive inactivation and a feasible means for manipulating HPP parameters for effective virus inactivation in fruit juices and puree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The correlation between the Bostwick degree and the static rheological properties of yield stress food fuids is first revisited and then reformulated in this work. The role of the yield stress in the free surface flow of the Bost-wick test is studied using dimensional analysis. Results from experiments on 48 different samples of yield stress fluids are considered and included to check the adequacy of the proposed correlation. Asymptotic dynamic behaviour is also presented and discussed as a mechanism of complete self similarity with respect of the dimensionless time. This approach would seem to support the opinions in favor of the yield stress as a key parameter, and thus offers an interesting new viewpoint useful to both future experiments on the Bostwick test and studies of 'dam-break' like dynamics.

The purpose of this study was to establish new food products that increase the nutritional value and health benefits of the probiotic yogurt currently used in the Western Heads East (WHE) Project in Mwanza, Tanzania. The probiotic yogurt has established health benefits, and product development through fortification must not adversely affect the acceptability of yogurt or the viability of the probiotics. Both sensory testing and microbial analysis testing were conducted. The products tested were yogurt fortified with locally-grown fruit purees with inulin and Moringa oleifera. The results of the sensory evaluation showed that all yogurts were not rated significantly different from the control, except for appearance. The avocado puree without inulin rated significantly lower in all categories. The microbial analysis showed that Moringa oleifera did not negatively affect the growth of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 in MRS, milk or yogurt, although a significant decrease was found after 5 weeks of storage at 4 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wampee (Clausena lansium) fruits (CLS), whose pulp can be used to prepare fruit cups, desserts, jam, or jelly, can be eaten along with the peel. In this study, a PC12 cell model was built to observe the protective effect of CLS against H2O2-induced oxidative stress. We found that pretreatment with CLS increased cell viability and inhibited cytotoxicity, caspase-3 activity and DNA condensation. CLS also attenuated the increase in ROS production and MMP reduction. Moreover, we attempted to determine whether CLS suppressed the expression and phosphorylation of NF-κB. Western blot and immunostaining assay revealed that CLS inhibited H2O2-induced up-regulation of NF-κB p65 and pNF-κB p65. And CLS significantly suppressed the translocation of NF-κB p65 and pNF-κB p65 from cytoplasm to nuclear. Also, seven major compounds including a new flavanoid, luteolin-4'-O-β-D-gluco-pyranoside (3) and six known compounds 1,2, 4-7 were isolated and identified from CLS. Their antioxidative and H2O2-induced PC12 cell apoptosis-reversing activity were determined. These findings suggest that CLS and its major constituents (flavanoids) may be potential antioxidant agents and should encourage further research into their use as a functional food for neurodegenerative diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was carried out to improve the nutritional value of goat's milk dadih by the addition of tropical- fruit purees, namely, jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus, Lam.), pineapple (Ananas comosus) and papaya (Carica papaya). Dadih with added fruits were compared with the control (without fruit puree) for physical, chemical and sensory attributes. The texture properties of the tropical- fruit dadih were significantly different (p< 0.05) from the control. Control dadih showed highest values for lightness and hue (p< 0.05) as compared to tropical- fruit dadih. The addition of tropical- fruit purees significantly increased (p< 0.05) the moisture, protein, ash and vitamin C contents of the fruit added dadih. There were no significant differences (p> 0.05) in the fat, carbohydrate, energy and total soluble solid contents. Sensory evaluations using a hedonic test showed that all dadih were acceptable. Overall, syneresis of the dadih increased with decreasing pH throughout storage at 4 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aimed to develop an instant flour using the mesocarp of breadfruit, variety apyrena, and assess its physicochemical composition, as well as to develop a flour based puree and determine its potential sensory acceptance by potential consumers, employing the consumer testing. The in natura breadfruit presented moisture in dry basis, pH, soluble solids and total acidity values of 74.58%, 6.01, 5.6ºBrix and 1.64%, respectively, while the instant flour presented moisture, pH, density, alcohol content, soluble acidity and water activity values of 9.4%, 5.55, 0.61 g mL-1, 2.098% and 0.538, respectively. The equation adapted from Brooker, used to adjust the drying behavior, was efficient to describe the process of breadfruit drying. The puree breadfruit presented good acceptability by the consumers, considering the sensorial attributes evaluated, except for color, and most of them declared that they would buy the product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A large number of purees of fruits and vegetables are produced commercially; some are usually consumed directly, while others are used as intermediate products and ingredients. The fruit purees studied were realized with peach, apple and pear. Immediately after the production (t0) and after the storage period (tn) the pH, soluble solids content, titratable acidity, ascorbic acid content and Bostwick consistency of samples were evaluated. Furthermore after the storage period (tn) the moisture content, the water activity and the colour parameters were also determined. Rheological properties were evaluated by using a controlled stress–strain rheometer and a cone and plate geometry sensor. The viscosity (η) against shear rate were evaluated to study the rheological behaviour of all fruit purees. In this study the flow curves were also evaluated and fitted according to the rheological model of Casson. The experimental measurements showed that the viscosity variation against the shear rate of fruit purees is exponential and therefore they are non-Newtonian fluids. The Casson model was found to fit adequately (R2 ≥0.84) over the entire shear-rate range. Moreover significant and interesting correlations between Bostwick consistency and some rheological parameters were found. Unfortunately a scanty production''s standardization over the years was observed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, a comparative study of the effectiveness of deep neural networks (DNNs) in the classification of pure and impure purees is conducted. Three different types of deep neural networks (DNNs)—the Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), the Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), and the temporal convolutional network (TCN)—are employed for the detection of adulteration of strawberry purees. The Strawberry dataset, a time series spectroscopy dataset from the UCR time series classification repository, is utilized to evaluate the performance of different DNNs. Experimental results demonstrate that the TCN is able to obtain a higher classification accuracy than the GRU and LSTM. Moreover, the TCN achieves a new state-of-the-art classification accuracy on the Strawberry dataset. These results indicates the great potential of using the TCN for the detection of adulteration of fruit purees in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]