Effect of intake of food hydrocolloids of bacterial origin on the glycemic response in humans: Systematic review and narrative synthesis

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic condition characterized by increased blood glucose levels from dysfunctional carbohydrate metabolism. Dietary intervention can help to prevent and manage the disease. Food hydrocolloids have been shown to have favorable properties in relation to glycaemic regulation. However, the use of food hydrocolloids of bacterial origin to modulate glucose responses is much less explored than other types of hydrocolloids. We, therefore, carried out the first review examining the impact of intake of food hydrocolloids of bacterial origin (as a direct supplement or incorporated into foods) on glycemic response in humans. Fourteen studies met the inclusion criteria. They used either xanthan gum, pullulan, or dextran as interventions. There was a wide variation in the amount of hydrocolloid supplementation provided and methods of preparation. Postprandial blood glucose responses were reduced in half of the studies, particularly at higher intake levels and longer chain hydrocolloids. When xanthan gum was added to the cooking process of muffins and rice, a significant reduction in postprandial blood glucose was observed. The use of these hydrocolloids is potentially effective though more research is needed in this area

Resource access control in the facebook model

We study the fundamental security properties of resource access control as suggested by the operation of current social networks including Facebook. The "facebook model", which treats the server as a trusted party, suggests two fundamental properties, "owner privacy" and "server consistency", and two different modes of revocation, implicit and explicit. Through black-box experimentation, we determine Facebook's implementation for resource access control and we analyze its security properties within our formal model.We demonstrate, by the construction of explicit attacks, that the current implementation is not secure: specifically, we attack privacy with implicit revocation and server consistency. We evaluate the implications of the attacks and we propose amendments that can align the current implementation with all its intended security properties. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that a security analysis of the Facebook resource access control mechanism is performed within a proper security model. © Springer International Publishing 2013

Exploring the Role of Cereal Dietary Fiber in Digestion

Increasing the dietary fibre of staple foods such as bread is an attractive way to promote healthy eating in a large part of the population, where dietary fibre consumption is reportedly below the recommended values. However, many consumers prefer white breads, which are typically low in dietary fibre. In this work, white bread was made from two wheat cultivars with differing fibre contents. The resulting breads showed similar quality parameters (volume, specific volume, firmness, inner structure characteristics) with any differences maintained below 7%. Bread digestibility was evaluated using a novel dynamic in-vitro digestion model. Reduced digestion rates of 30% were estimated for the high-fibre white bread compared to the control. Overall, this work demonstrates the potential to produce healthy, high-fibre white breads, acceptable to consumers, and with reduced rate of starch digestion by exploiting genetic variation in dietary fibre content of wheat cultivars