Food loss and waste metrics: a proposed nutritional cost footprint linking linear programming and life cycle assessment

Purpose: The main purpose of this article is to assess the nutritional and economic efficiency of food loss and waste (FLW) along the supply of 13 food categories included in the Spanish food basket by means of the definition of a new method which combines two indexes. Methods: The nutrient-rich foods index and the economic food loss and waste (EFLW) index were combined by means of linear programming to obtain the nutritional cost footprint (NCF) indicator under a life cycle perspective. The functional unit used was the daily supply of food for a Spanish citizen in year 2015. Results and discussion: Results showed that vegetables and cereals were the food categories most affected by the inefficiencies in the food supply chain under a nutritional perspective, being agricultural production and household consumption the main stages in which the nutritional content of food is lost or wasted. Moreover, according to the NCF index, vegetables represented 27% of total nutritional-economic wastage throughout the entire Spanish agri-food chain. They are followed by fruits, which add up to 19%. Hence, specific food waste management strategies should be established for these specific products and supply stages. Finally, the sensitivity analysis performed highlighted that results were mostly independent from the importance attributed to either nutritional or economic variables. Conclusions: The methodology described in this study proposes an indicator quantifying the nutritional-economic cost of different food categories in the Spanish food basket. This NCF indicator makes it possible to define reduction strategies to promote the use of food waste fractions for waste-to-energy valorization approaches or the extraction of different types of pharmacological, chemical, or cosmetic compounds.The authors are grateful for the funding of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the Ceres-Procom: Food production and consumption strategies for climate change mitigation (CTM2016-76176-C2-1-R) (AEI/FEDER, UE)

The establishment of a marine focused biorefinery for bioethanol production using seawater and a novel marine yeast strain

Current technologies for bioethanol production rely on the use of freshwater for preparing the fermentation media and use yeasts of a terrestrial origin. Life cycle assessment has suggested that between 1,388 to 9,812 litres of freshwater are consumed for every litre of bioethanol produced. Hence, bioethanol is considered a product with a high-water footprint. This paper investigated the use of seawater-based media and a novel marine yeast strain ‘Saccharomyces cerevisiae AZ65’ to reduce the water footprint of bioethanol. Results revealed that S. cerevisiae AZ65 had a significantly higher osmotic tolerance when compared with the terrestrial reference strain. Using 15-L bioreactors, S. cerevisiae AZ65 produced 93.50 g/L ethanol with a yield of 83.33% (of the theoretical yield) and a maximum productivity of 2.49 g/L/h when using seawater-YPD media. This approach was successfully applied using an industrial fermentation substrate (sugarcane molasses). S. cerevisiae AZ65 produced 52.23 g/L ethanol using molasses media prepared in seawater with a yield of 73.80% (of the theoretical yield) and a maximum productivity of 1.43 g/L/h. These results demonstrated that seawater can substitute freshwater for bioethanol production without compromising production efficiency. Results also revealed that marine yeast is a potential candidate for use in the bioethanol industry especially when using seawater or high salt based fermentation media

Pathogenesis of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis in girls - a double neuro-osseous theory involving disharmony between two nervous systems, somatic and autonomic expressed in the spine and trunk: possible dependency on sympathetic nervous system and hormones with implications for medical therapy

Anthropometric data from three groups of adolescent girls - preoperative adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), screened for scoliosis and normals were analysed by comparing skeletal data between higher and lower body mass index subsets. Unexpected findings for each of skeletal maturation, asymmetries and overgrowth are not explained by prevailing theories of AIS pathogenesis. A speculative pathogenetic theory for girls is formulated after surveying evidence including: (1) the thoracospinal concept for right thoracic AIS in girls; (2) the new neuroskeletal biology relating the sympathetic nervous system to bone formation/resorption and bone growth; (3) white adipose tissue storing triglycerides and the adiposity hormone leptin which functions as satiety hormone and sentinel of energy balance to the hypothalamus for long-term adiposity; and (4) central leptin resistance in obesity and possibly in healthy females. The new theory states that AIS in girls results from developmental disharmony expressed in spine and trunk between autonomic and somatic nervous systems. The autonomic component of this double neuro-osseous theory for AIS pathogenesis in girls involves selectively increased sensitivity of the hypothalamus to circulating leptin (genetically-determined up-regulation possibly involving inhibitory or sensitizing intracellular molecules, such as SOC3, PTP-1B and SH2B1 respectively), with asymmetry as an adverse response (hormesis); this asymmetry is routed bilaterally via the sympathetic nervous system to the growing axial skeleton where it may initiate the scoliosis deformity (leptin-hypothalamic-sympathetic nervous system concept = LHS concept). In some younger preoperative AIS girls, the hypothalamic up-regulation to circulating leptin also involves the somatotropic (growth hormone/IGF) axis which exaggerates the sympathetically-induced asymmetric skeletal effects and contributes to curve progression, a concept with therapeutic implications. In the somatic nervous system, dysfunction of a postural mechanism involving the CNS body schema fails to control, or may induce, the spinal deformity of AIS in girls (escalator concept). Biomechanical factors affecting ribs and/or vertebrae and spinal cord during growth may localize AIS to the thoracic spine and contribute to sagittal spinal shape alterations. The developmental disharmony in spine and trunk is compounded by any osteopenia, biomechanical spinal growth modulation, disc degeneration and platelet calmodulin dysfunction. Methods for testing the theory are outlined. Implications are discussed for neuroendocrine dysfunctions, osteopontin, sympathoactivation, medical therapy, Rett and Prader-Willi syndromes, infantile idiopathic scoliosis, and human evolution. AIS pathogenesis in girls is predicated on two putative normal mechanisms involved in trunk growth, each acquired in evolution and unique to humans

Enzyme production from food wastes using a biorefinery concept

According to Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), one-third of food produced globally for human consumption (nearly 1.3 billion tonnes) is lost along the food supply chain. In many countries food waste is currently landfilled or incinerated together with other combustible municipal wastes for possible recovery of energy. However, these two options are facing more and more economic and environmental stresses. Due to its organic- and nutrient-rich nature, theoretically food waste can be converted to valuable products (e.g. bio-products such as methane, hydrogen, ethanol, enzymes, organic acids, chemicals and fuels) through various fermentation processes. Such conversion of food waste is potentially more profitable than its conversion to animal feed or transportation fuel. Food waste valorisation has therefore gained interest, with value added bio-products such as methane, hydrogen, ethanol, enzymes, organic acids, chemicals, and fuels. Therefore, the aim of this review is to provide information on the food waste situation with emphasis on Asia–Pacific countries and the state of the art food waste processing technologies to produce enzymes

Newly developed techniques on polycondensation, ring-opening polymerization and polymer modification : focus on poly(lactic acid)

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Ultrasonic pretreatment of food waste to accelerate enzymatic hydrolysis for glucose production

Recovering valuable materials from food waste by applying the concept of a bio-refinery is attracting considerable interest. To this effect, we investigated the possibility of enhancing the enzymatic hydrolysis of food waste using ultrasonic technology. The effect of pre-treating blended food waste with high-intensity ultrasound (20 kHz) on subsequent hydrolysis by glucoamylase was investigated as a function of sonication time and temperature. Particle sizing by laser diffraction, and imaging via scanning electronic microscopy showed that ultrasonic pre-treatment could reduce the particle size of the blended food waste significantly, resulting in a better interaction with the enzyme. As a consequence, the glucose yield of enzymatic hydrolysis was ∼10% higher for food waste pre-sonicated using the most intensive ultrasonication conditions studied (5 min sonication at a power of 0.8 W/mL at 20 °C) than for the untreated control. In addition, the time required to achieve high yields of glucose could be more than halved using ultrasonic pre-treatment. This could enable the hydrolysis reactor size or the enzyme usage to be reduced by more than 50%. Therefore, an ultrasound-assisted bioconversion process from food waste into a value-added product has been demonstrated