Evaluation of Antioxidant Effects of Pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo L.) Seed Extract on Aging- and Menopause-Related Diseases Using Saos-2 Cells and Ovariectomized Rats.

Aging and menopause are associated with oxidative stress and inflammation. Here, we evaluated the antioxidant properties of pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo L.) seed extract and assessed its ameliorative effects on aging- and menopause-related diseases using Saos-2 cells and ovariectomized rats. The seed extract had bioactive components that exhibited antioxidant activity. The extract increased the alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity of Saos-2 cells. The oral administration of the extract to ovariectomized rats for 12 weeks decreased their body weight, fat weight, and cardiac risk indices. It also contributed to reductions in the levels of reactive oxygen species, oxidative stress, and inflammation, as assessed by measuring the serum levels of malondialdehyde and analyzing gene expression in rats. Furthermore, the administration of the extract also promoted an enhancement of the transcription of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor (Nrf2), heme oxygenase-1 (Ho-1), and catalase (Cat), involved in antioxidant activity; endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNos), involved in vasculoprotective activity; and PR/SET domain 16 (Prdm16) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator (Pgc1α), involved in brown adipogenesis and thermogenesis. Our results using ovariectomized rats show that pumpkin seed extract may have ameliorative effects on menopause-related diseases by increasing ALP activity, evaluating the antioxidant system, ameliorating oxidative stress and thermogenesis, and enhancing lipid profiles.

Effects of Cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) Extract on Adipocyte Differentiation in 3T3-L1 Cells and Lipid Accumulation in Mice Fed a High-Fat Diet.

Flavonoids and phenolic acid are two of the rich polyphenols found in cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum). The effects of cinnamon extract on the inhibition of adipocyte differentiation in 3T3-L1 fibroblast cells and prohibitory lipid accumulation in male mice fed a high-fat diet were examined. Upon treating 3T3-L1 cells with cinnamon for 3 days, the cinnamon inhibited lipid accumulation and increased gene expression levels, such as those of adiponectin and leptin. In in vivo experiments, mice were randomized into four groups after a one-week acclimation period, as follows: normal diet, normal diet + 1% cinnamon extract, high-fat diet, and high-fat diet + 1% cinnamon extract. After 14 weeks of supplementation, we found that cinnamon extract increased the expression of lipolysis-related proteins, such as AMPK, p-ACC, and CPT-1, and reduced the expression of lipid-synthesis-related proteins, such as SREBP-1c and FAS, in liver tissue. Our results show that cinnamon extract may exhibit anti-obesity effects via the inhibition of lipid synthesis and adipogenesis and the induction of lipolysis in both 3T3-L1 fibroblast cells and mice fed a high-fat diet. Accordingly, cinnamon extract may have potential anti-obesity effects.

Scientizing Everyday Life, Rationalizing Eating Habits: The Rise of Nutrition Science in 1910s-1920s Japan.

Historians of science have noted that modern nation-states and capitalism necessitated the systematic creation and implementation of a wide array of knowledge and technologies to produce a more productive and robust population. Commonly labeled as biopolitical practices in Foucauldian sense, such endeavors have often been discussed in the realms of public hygiene, housing, birth control, and child mortality, among others. This article is an attempt to extend the scope of the discussion by exploring a relatively understudied domain of nutrition science as a critical case of social engineering and intervention, specifically during and after World War I in the case of Japan. Research and dissemination of knowledge on food and health in Japan, like other industrializing nation-states, centered on new public hygiene initiatives since the late nineteenth-century. However, in the aftermath of WWI, or more precisely, after the Rice Riots of 1918, a new trend began to dominate the discourse of nutrition and health. In the face of wartime inflation and the resultant nation-wide riots, physicians and social scientists alike began to view the food choice and budget issue as a solution to the middle class crisis. This new perception drew on the conceptual framework to understand food, metabolism, and cost in the language of quantifiable nutrition vis-à-vis monetary values. By analyzing how specific nutritional knowledge was translated into the tenets for public campaigns to reform everyday life, this paper ultimately sheds light on the institutionalization of a new area of research, nutrition (eiyo) in Japan.