Understanding the health benefits and technological properties of ß-glucan for the development of easy-to-swallow gels to guarantee food security among seniors.

The world's population is growing rapidly and the number of elderly people with undernutrition and malnutrition is increasing. Common health problems among seniors are cardiovascular, inflammatory, gastrointestinal, and cognitive disorders, cancer, diabetes, psychological and dental problems. The food industry is trying to meet the demands of an aging society, but these efforts are not sufficient. New strategies are needed, and they demand foods development with modified textures that are easy to swallow, such as gels suitable for seniors. Depending on the specific needs of the elderly, bioactive compounds with health benefits should be included in food systems. Novel foods may play an important role in the prevention, maintenance, and treatment of age-related diseases. One of the most studied bioactive compound is ß-glucan, a polysaccharide with approved health claims confirmed by clinical trials, such as "ß-glucan contributes to the maintenance of normal blood cholesterol levels" and "the consumption of ß-glucan from oats or barley contributes to the reduction of postprandial glucose spikes." In this review, the health benefits, and technological properties of ß-glucan for the development of senior-friendly ready-to-swallow gels were described. In addition, some patents and studies conducted in connection with the development of the gel systems were collected.

Temporal dominance of sensations and preferences of Brazilians and Slovakians: A cross-cultural study of cachaças stored with woods from the Amazon rainforest.

BACKGROUND: Brazilians and Slovakians evaluated the temporal profile and the acceptability of cachaça stored with different woods (Cumarurana (CM), Jatobá (JT) and, Louro-vermelho (LV), which are found in the Amazon rainforest, and also oak), with the aim of performing a cross-cultural comparison of the dynamic profile of the attributes perceived in the cachaças and the sensorial acceptance of the samples. RESULTS: Important differences were observed between the temporal sensorial profiles generated by the two groups and their preferences. Brazilians preferred cachaças stored with the traditional wood, oak, followed by those stored with JT and CM. In contrast, Slovakians preferred cachaças stored with JT, followed by those stored with LV and oak. For both countries, the dominance of wood flavor and vanilla attributes at the end of the analysis time was positively associated with acceptance, while the dominance of off-flavors and the wood flavor attribute at the beginning of the analysis time was negatively associated with acceptance for Brazilians and Slovakians, respectively. CONCLUSION: Brazilians preferred cachaça stored with oak wood, and Slovakians preferred cachaça stored with JT wood, with acceptability being strongly associated with the dominance of wood flavor and vanilla attributes at the end of the evaluation time. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry.

Flavour and identification threshold detection overview of Slovak adepts for certified testing.

OBJECTIVES: During certification process of sensory assessors of Slovak certification body we obtained results for basic taste thresholds and lifestyle habits. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 500 adult people were screened during experiment with food industry background. For analysis of basic and non basic tastes, we used standardized procedure of ISO 8586-1:1993. RESULTS: In flavour test experiment, group of (26-35 y.o) produced the lowest error ratio (1.438), highest is (56+ y.o.) group with result (2.0). Average error value based on gender for women was (1.510) in comparison to men (1.477). People with allergies have the average error ratio (1.437) in comparison to people without allergies (1.511). Non-smokers produced less errors (1.484) against the smokers (1.576). Another flavour threshold identification test detected differences among age groups (by age are values increased). The highest number of errors made by men in metallic taste was (24%) the same as made by women (22%). Higher error ratio made by men occurred in salty taste (19%) against women (10%). Analysis detected some differences between allergic/non-allergic, smokers/non-smokers groups.

Towards reliable estimation of an "electronic tongue" predictive ability from PLS regression models in wine analysis.

The paper is devoted to an assessment of the predictive power of PLS (partial least squares) models derived from "electronic tongue" data. A multisensor system ("electronic tongue") based on a potentiometric platform was applied to the analysis of wines. Both white and red wine varieties were analyzed employing different sensor arrays. 36 different samples of white wines from New Zealand (Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris varieties) were analyzed by a number of standard chemical techniques to assess the contents of free and total sulfur dioxide, total acidity, ethanol, pH and some phenolics. Furthermore, 27 samples of red wines produced in Slovakia (Blaufränkisch variety) were assessed by a skilled sensory panel to rate a set of 7 taste descriptors. In addition, all of the wines were analyzed by potentiometric electronic tongue (ET). PLS regression (partial least squares) was used to assess the correlation between ET response, and chemical analytical data, or human perceived sensory characteristics of the wines. Methods that are widely used in the ET literature for estimation of the predictive ability of the PLS models, such as full cross-validation and test set validation with a single random split of samples, were compared with a k-fold random split test set approach. It was shown that the latter does not tend to produce over-optimistic results in small data sets, as are typically available in ET research.