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Plant Source Foods
Published in Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy, Food and Lifestyle in Health and Disease, 2022
Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy
Sugarcane or sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum Linn.) is a perennial grass of the family Poaceae (63). It was first grown in Southeast Asia and western India. It is now cultivated in the tropical and sub-tropical regions from Australia, India, South Asia to South Africa, South America, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States. Approximately 70% of crystal sugar production worldwide comes from sugarcane and 30% from sugar beet. The most important constituent in whole sugarcane is sucrose which is typically measured in the plant stalk (64). Sugarcane juice is the extracted liquid mainly used for the production of crystalline sugar or white sugar and other products like raw sugar, brown sugar, molasses, jaggery, candies, and ethanol. Fresh sugarcane juice is a common drink in Southeast Asia. The main byproducts of the sugar industry are bagasse, molasses, and sugar wax (64). After treatment of sugarcane juice by evaporation, concentration and centrifugation, crystalline raw sugar is settled down, then refined to give table sugar or white sugar, while the viscous supernatant liquid is called molasses. Jaggery is generally produced in developing countries from sugarcane juice after filtration and boiling, but without sugar refining. Hence, jaggery sugar has a natural dark brown color (63–64).
Community-Based Methods for Preventing Dental Caries and Periodontal Disease
Published in Lars Granath, William D. McHugh, Systematized Prevention of Oral Disease: Theory and Practice, 2019
Legislation and regulation to control production, labeling, advertising, and marketing of sugary foods might meet with a degree of public acceptance. At the other end of the scale, so might appropriate subsidies and tax credits to food manufacturers. Restriction on sales of sweets and sugar-containing snacks at and in the immediate vicinity of schools have been applied in some parts of the U.S.94 Benefits are uncertain,51,75,76 though there is some evidence from Australia that these efforts can be successful.84 Some countries have developed food policies (Norway, for example) where a mix of regulation, economic incentives, and education are designed to lead people toward more healthful diets. However, food policies are difficult to apply in many developing countries, where the availability of food, and its price, is often a preoccupying issue in itself. With caries rates increasing in many such countries, national policies to discourage sugar production and consumption would be valuable,93 but unfortunately (from the dental viewpoint) some such countries are encouraging greater sugar production for local consumption. The long-term effects on the oral health of such populations are likely to be serious.
The obesity epidemic and American culture
Published in Anna Bellisari, The Anthropology Of Obesity in the United States, 2016
The sugar industry was one of the earliest to develop under the capitalist system (Mintz 1993). Sugar, imported from Caribbean islands, once served as a medicine and spice, a luxury fit only for the wealthy in England and France. Elaborate crystalline desserts made of sugar were served at royal feasts. With the development of the African slave trade and Caribbean plantations (Williams 1961), the cost of sugar production declined. It was sold widely throughout European countries to sweeten the bitter tea, coffee, and chocolate that were also produced on tropical plantations by slaves and introduced into the general European market. Sugar production spurred spin-off industries such as the building of casks to transport raw sugar to English refineries, and mining of coal to fuel their furnaces, thus stimulating further industrial development in England. Sugar became an inexpensive commodity and a high-energy dietary staple for poor European industrial workers to fuel their heavy industrial labor. It also became a democratic symbol for the general public’s improved standard of living by emulating elite lifestyles.
Improved hepatoprotective activity of Beta vulgaris L. leaf extract loaded self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDDS): in vitro and in vivo evaluation
Published in Drug Development and Industrial Pharmacy, 2020
Ahmed Alaa Kassem, Sameh Hosam Abd El-Alim, Asmaa Mohamed Salman, Mona Arafa Mohammed, Nabila Salah Hassan, Souad Eisawy El-Gengaihi
Beta vulgaris L. (beetroot) is a vegetable plant that belongs to family Amaranthaceae [6]. It is native to the coasts of the Mediterranean and is extensively cultivated in Europe, America and many parts of India [7]. In Egypt, the plant was first cultivated in 1982 for sugar production [8]. Beetroot is a rich source of phytochemical compounds such as phenolic acids, carotenoids and flavonoids [9,10]. Beetroot also contains betalains, which are a group of highly bioactive pigments [11,12]. Several reports have showed that Beta vulgaris L. root extracts possess hypoglycemic, antioxidant, antihypertensive [13], anti-inflammatory and hepatoprotective activities [14,15]. Yet, in spite of the reported benefits of beetroot, a small number of studies have explored the effects of the stalks, leaves and other less-consumed parts of the plant [16]. The presence of phytochemicals such as polyphenols, flavonoids, minerals, vitamins and betalains; for example, the red violet pigments; betacyanins and the yellow pigments; betaxanthines has been shown in the leaves [17]. El-Gengaihi et al. reported the occurrence of different phenolic acids in leaves' extract from which gallic acid was the major. The beet leaves' extract showed a notable anti-hepatotoxic activity against hepatic damage induced by carbon tetrachloride [7]. Beet leaves' extract has also exhibited hepatoprotective effect against ethanol [17] and acetaminophen [18] induced hepatotoxicity.
Noise exposures of sugar cane mill workers in Guatemala
Published in International Journal of Audiology, 2020
Ashley M. Stumpf, Grant Erlandson, Jennifer Ruths, Deanna K. Meinke, Lee S. Newman, Lyndsay Krisher, Daniel Pilloni, Alex Cruz, Claudia Asensio
Regulations and best practice guidelines are important to consider in occupational settings where high level noise is a risk, as 16% of hearing loss in adults worldwide is thought to be due to hazardous noise exposure in the workplace (Nelson et al. 2005). One sector in which noise induced hearing loss is of concern in Guatemala is within the sugar industry. This industry is responsible for a large portion of economic growth, as sugar is one of the country’s leading agricultural exports. Guatemala exported 1.98 million metric tons (MMT) in raw and refined sugar in 2017 and is the highest source of foreign exchange for the Guatemalan agricultural sector, followed by bananas and then coffee (Tay and Drennan 2018). It is estimated that Guatemalan sugar production accounts for approximately 80,000 direct and 400,000 indirect jobs (Furlong 2018). Noise exposure in the sugar industry is encountered at numerous levels of the manufacturing process. Mechanical noise is a concern during harvesting, as well as during milling/production.
Antioxidant and Anti-Diabetic Functions of a Polyphenol-Rich Sugarcane Extract
Published in Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 2019
Jin Ji, Xin Yang, Matthew Flavel, Zenaida P.-I. Shields, Barry Kitchen
Discovery of phytochemicals in sugarcane plants has generated interests in exploring the use of the plant to help prevent diseases usually thought to be caused by sugar. The availability of these compounds in the waste products from sugar production provides an opportunity to extract the bioactives and the therapeutic material that would otherwise be discarded. In this study, we utilized a patented hydrophobic extraction process to obtain a PRSE. Preliminary characterization work indicates that PRSE contains 221 mg GAE/g of polyphenol, a high level of polyphenols comparing with other natural products known for their polyphenol contents. As shown in Table 2, the total phenol content in ground turmeric spice is 27.54 mg GAE/g, 36.63 mg GAE/g for dry cocoa powder, and 66 mg GAE/g for sumac bran. It is remarkable that a hydrophobic resin extraction process enables the production of a polyphenol-rich extract from sugarcane processing waste products that are largely not known as source of polyphenols.