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School lunch plays an important role in children's healthy growth. Previous investigations revealed many problems with school lunches, including unreasonable dietary structure and insufficient micronutrients. This study aimed to assess the dietary structure and nutritional quality of lunches in Nanjing primary and middle schools. A stratified cluster random sampling method was used to select 44 schools that supply lunch in 12 districts in Nanjing, with two primary and two middle schools in each district. Twenty-four primary and twenty middle schools were selected. The Mann–Whitney U test was used to explore the influencing factors. Findings revealed a serious shortage of milk and fruit in school lunches; supply of eggs, fish, shrimp, and shellfish was less than half of the recommended quantity; livestock and poultry supply exceeded the recommended level by over four times. Energy and nutrition intake were suboptimal. Provision of energy, carbohydrates, vitamins (A, B1, B2, and C), calcium, and iron in urban primary schools was significantly higher than that in non-urban primary schools. The same pattern of significantly higher nutrients was equally seen in urban middle schools compared with non-urban middle schools, indicating that food supply was affected by regional economies. Therefore, it is urgent to improve the quality of lunches, with a particular focus on those in non-urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The effects of Polygonum Cillinerve polysaccharide (PCP) on the immune and antioxidant activity were studied. Methods: The effects of PCP on cell proliferation, phagocytic activity, cell uptake, the secretion of NO, iNOS, IL-6, IL-12, CAT and POD, intracellular ROS, cell apoptosis and antioxidative mechanism were measured by MTT, ELISA, fluorescence staining, flow cytometry and western blot. Key findings: The results showed that PCP had no toxic effect at 31.25–1.95 µg/ml, could improve the uptake of neutral red and fluorescein isothiocyanate-labelled ovalbumin and promote the release of nitric oxide and nitric oxide synthase. Moreover, PCP also could promote the secretion of IL-6 and IL-12. The damage of RAW264.7 cells induced by hydrogen peroxide was significantly alleviated by PCP at 15.63–0.975 µg/ml. The mechanism of antioxidative damage might be that PCP inhibited the upstream p38 and the phosphorylation of JNK and ERK proteins, and down-regulated caspase 3 and up-regulated the protein expressions of cytochrome C and Bcl-2, finally PCP improved the antioxidative capacity and protected the oxidative damage of cells. Conclusions: These results indicated that PCP had the better immunopotentiation and antioxidative damage activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]