Bean lovers know there’s some truth to this schoolyard saying: “Beans, beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot!” Noisy flatulence following a burrito is just a part of life for some people.

Chefs can tinker with beans to make them less offensive — but oftentimes, pre-treating a food to correct one problem reduces its nutritional value.

Now researchers have identified two types of bacteria that could help take the toot out of beans while also making them more nutritious.

Bacteria living in the large intestine are tasked to break down food that wasn’t fully digested in the stomach or small intestine — particularly things like the large quantity of soluble fiber in beans.

As the bacteria glean the final bits of nutrients from your meal, they release tiny bubbles of methane gas. The bubbles conglomerate and eventually find their way out of the body, potentially disturbing social situations.

Many bean recipes call for soaking beans in water overnight before baking. Soaked beans take less time to cook, but they also ferment a little. Fermentation breaks down the bean’s nutrients so your gut doesn’t have to work so hard and you produce less flatulence. Read the rest of this entry »

In spite of what Mother taught you about the benefits of eating broccoli, data collected by the U.S. government show that the nutritional content of America’s vegetables and fruits has declined during the past 50 years — in some cases dramatically.

Donald Davis, a biochemist at the University of Texas, said that of 13 major nutrients in fruits and vegetables tracked by the Agriculture Department from 1950 to 1999, six showed noticeable declines — protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and vitamin C. The declines ranged from 6 percent for protein, 15 percent for iron, 20 percent for vitamin C, and 38 percent for riboflavin.

“It’s an amazing thing,” said Davis, adding that the decline in nutrient content has not been widely noticed.

He said an agriculture scientist appears to have been the first to pick up the disappearance of nutrients in 1981 in a paper comparing the data on nutrients on garden crops grown in the United States with those grown in England.

Davis, who discussed his findings at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis, suspects the trend in agriculture toward encouraging crops that grow the fastest and biggest is a reason for the decline. The past five decades have been marked by the “Green Revolution,” which has seen a marked increase in U.S. production and yields as farmers have turned to the fastest-growing and greatest-producing plants. Read the rest of this entry »

Australia’s policy of restricting antibiotic use in food-producing animals may be linked with lower levels of drug-resistant bacteria found in its citizens, according to an article in the May 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online.

Campylobacter jejuni is a leading bacterial cause of foodborne illness in industrialized countries. Drug resistance can make Campylobacter infections difficult for physicians to treat, and can result in longer bouts of diarrhea and a higher risk of serious or even fatal illness. Bacterial resistance to drugs is generally attributed to inappropriate prescribing or overuse of antibiotics.

An Australian solution to the drug resistance problem has been to prohibit the use of certain antibiotics, called fluoroquinolones, in food animals such as poultry. Such a policy puts Australia in a relatively unique position, since its animal and food production levels are comparable to those of other industrialized nations, but it has avoided using the antibiotics that have been standard in the other countries’ food animal production.

To evaluate whether the country’s restrictive antibiotic policy has affected bacterial drug resistance, Australian researchers examined C. jejuni isolates collected from 585 patients in five Australian states. None of the patients had received fluoroquinolone treatment within the month prior to becoming ill. The researchers discovered that only 2 percent of the locally acquired Campylobacter isolates were resistant to ciprofloxacin, a type of fluoroquinolone. Countries that allow fluoroquinolone use in animals may have a drug resistance prevalence of up to 29 percent. Ciprofloxacin can be used to treat severe Campylobacter disease, so a low level of bacterial drug resistance should lead to better treatment efficacy. Read the rest of this entry »

COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Fast food from McDonald’s is healthiest in Denmark and worst in the United States, a Danish study comparing levels of the deadliest kind of fat, trans fatty acids, showed.

The study, conducted by researchers at Gentofte University Hospital in Denmark and published in this week’s edition of the
New England Journal of Medicine, compared meals bought at McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken in 20 countries around the world.

A large meal of chicken nuggets and french fries at McDonald’s in the United States contained 10.1 grams of trans fatty acids, while the same meal in France contained 5.9 grams and just 0.33 grams in Denmark, Steen Stender, who headed the research project, told AFP.

“Many people think that wherever you go in the world you get the same thing at McDonald’s, but in fact that is not the case,” Stender told AFP.

The low Danish levels are the result of low-fat legislation introduced in 2004. Under the new law, no more than two percent of fats in foods sold to customers can be industrially-produced transfats. Food producers violating the law risk two years in prison. Read the rest of this entry »

Though promiscuity may be risky behavior for humans, it’s healthy for honeybees: Queen honeybees who indulge in sexual surfeits with multiple drones produce more disease-resistant colonies than monogamous monarchs.

According to a new Cornell study published in the Jan. 7 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, the curious promiscuity of queen honeybees has long perplexed apiculturists, especially since seeking out multiple mates takes more time and energy and puts the queens at greater peril for predator attacks.

“Even though just one male provides all the sperm that a queen needs for the rest of her life, queen honeybees go out on mating flights and obtain sperm from a dozen or more males,” said lead author Thomas Seeley, Cornell professor of biology and chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior.

Seeley and David Tarpy of North Carolina State University tested the leading hypothesis that queens’ promiscuity improves colony disease resistance by boosting the genetic diversity of their offspring, the worker bees. “This required a particularly nasty experiment, in which we inoculated colonies with the most virulent disease of honeybees that is known, the dreaded American foulbrood disease,” said Seeley. Read the rest of this entry »