A DuPont Nutrition & Health consumer survey has identified the top health concerns of European seniors and found that active ingredients are a primary driver of senior nutrition purchases. For food manufacturers, the findings reveal a realm of opportunities to develop targeted nutritional products for active adults as they age.

Arjuna Natural Extracts Ltd. has been granted official recognition from the Belgian government to market its proprietary herbal blend for overall wellness, branded “Herbagut”, in Belgium. This notification is applied in conjunction with the name of Arjuna Natural Extracts Ltd., but can be used by Arjuna’s customers as a reference.
A pure selection of traditional Indian herbal ingredients are extracted and formulated according to an ancient Indian recipe and applied to a reliable, traceable, clean-label formulation. The blend consists of 14 herbal extracts, all approved as non-Novel Food by the European Commission, and accepted for use in food supplements. Key botanical ingredients in the formulation are curcumin, ginger, and pepper, along with other Ayurvedic ingredients. Herbagut, a popular and leading brand in EU for more than 10 years, is based on an all-natural extract blend formulated by a well-known Indian traditional medical practitioner. It has been in use for gut health and general well-being for decades.
“The recognition by Belgium Food & Safety authorities means acceptance throughout the EU”, explains Benny Antony, PhD, Joint Managing Director for Arjuna. “It’s also a natural step in our strategy to lead the market in Indian herbal ingredients—not only regionally but also in the EU market.”
Arjuna Natural opened an office in Brussels last year to better, and more quickly, help serve its customers. “We have a comprehensive understanding of the complex European food regulation,” adds Antony. “This places us in an excellent position to offer our European customers complete commercial, technical, and regulatory support.”
Herbagut is safe to use in food supplements and can offer a range of health benefits including: improving gut microflora, mitigating constipation, relieving heartburn, and other digestive health issues. A clinical study with Herbagut shows that it helps regular and easy bowel movement, significantly reduces straining during bowel evacuation and improves overall bowel health and wellbeing.
Arjuna’s production processes and products meet market-specific regulations worldwide. A GMP-certified, SAP-driven company, Arjuna has achieved international certifications including ISO22000, Kosher and Halal. Arjuna continues to engage in research and development, with continuing scientific validation of its novel product line through advanced clinical studies.

www.arjunanatural.com

Outcomes of a new study comparing low calorie sweetened drinks to water effects on eating behaviour of healthy adult.

Michigan State University scientists have linked a common food preservative to an altered immune response that possibly hinders flu vaccines.

Borrowing concepts from medical diagnostic devices, Colorado State University chemists have created a simple, cheap set of handheld tests that can detect the presence of many water or food-borne pathogens. If applied in the field, such tests could greatly reduce the number of expensive follow-up tests needed to keep the food supply safe from fecal contamination.
The new testing systems are innovations from the lab of Chuck Henry, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry.
For their study, Henry and colleagues targeted a broad class of bacteria known as fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), which cause the highest number of hospitalizations and deaths from food poisoning. A common culprit: the use of unsafe water to irrigate green vegetables like alfalfa sprouts, spinach and lettuce.
While federal regulations require regular testing of fruits and vegetables for contamination with fecal matter, standard processes could use improvement. Common techniques like immunoassays and polymerase chain reactions (PCR) work reasonably well, but they can lead to false positives and require expensive equipment. The gold standard for bacterial detection is a lab culture, but this can take up to 48 hours to complete.
Henry and colleagues went for accurate, simple and cheap. They made two types of tests that detect an enzyme associated with the FIB bacteria. The first is a small strip of paper treated with a substrate molecule that changes colour when it contacts the bacterial enzyme – similar to a home pregnancy test. The researchers envision a smart phone app could be coupled with the paper test.
“We found that with filter paper, wax and a little bit of packing tape, we can do quite a bit of chemistry on here,” Henry said. “That’s about 2 cents worth of materials.”
Their second test is electrochemical and consists of screen-printed carbon electrodes on transparent sheets, which indicate the same bacteria by being inserted into a reader. The setup is similar to a home glucometer.
The researchers ran tests of contaminated water from a nearby lagoon, as well as water contaminated with E. coli and Enterococcus faecalis that was used to wash clean alfalfa sprouts. Both tests detected the harmful bacteria within four to 12 hours.
They next want to build a mobile computing platform for their tests. They’re working on a Raspberry Pi-based system that could perform kinetic measurements to detect changes in the bacteria levels over time, and automatically transmit the information to a cloud platform. The team is working with computer science researcher Sangmi Pallickara on these advances.
Henry explained that his lab’s new tests can’t tell exactly which bacteria are present, but they can detect the broad class of FIB bacteria that are usually responsible for foodborne illness outbreaks or closed beaches during the summer. “At this point, it is accurate but not specific,” Henry said. “This is the test that tells you that you need to do more tests.”

Colorado State Universityhttp://tinyurl.com/yag7chc5