Probiotic Fermented Foods:A scalable approach to promote gut health and improve nutrition

Locally produced probiotic fermented foods can be suitable for a range of appropriate, cost-effective, scalable, and sustainable approaches implemented at the household, community, and market levels

Opportunities and challenges for wholegrain staple foods in sub-Saharan Africa

This research article was published by 202

Perspective: Food environment research priorities for Africa—Lessons from the Africa Food Environment Research Network

Over the last 2 decades, many African countries have undergone dietary and nutrition transitions fuelled by globalization, rapid urbanization, and development. These changes have altered African food environments and, subsequently, dietary behaviors, including food acquisition and consumption. Dietary patterns associated with the nutrition transition have contributed to Africa's complex burden of malnutrition—obesity and other diet-related noncommunicable diseases (DR-NCDs)—along with persistent food insecurity and undernutrition. Available evidence links unhealthy or obesogenic food environments (including those that market and offer energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods and beverages) with suboptimal diets and associated adverse health outcomes. Elsewhere, governments have responded with policies to improve food environments. However, in Africa, the necessary research and policy action have received insufficient attention. Contextual evidence to motivate, enable, and create supportive food environments in Africa for better population health is urgently needed. In November 2020, the Measurement, Evaluation, Accountability, and Leadership Support for Noncommunicable Diseases Prevention Project (MEALS4NCDs) convened the first Africa Food Environment Research Network Meeting (FERN2020). This 3-d virtual meeting brought researchers from around the world to deliberate on future directions and research priorities related to improving food environments and nutrition across the African continent. The stakeholders shared experiences, best practices, challenges, and opportunities for improving the healthfulness of food environments and related policies in low- and middle-income countries. In this article, we summarize the proceedings and research priorities identified in the meeting to advance the food environment research agenda in Africa, and thus contribute to the promotion of healthier food environments to prevent DR-NCDs, and other forms of malnutrition

Opportunities and challenges for wholegrain staple foods in sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) suffers from both undernutrition and overnutrition. Wholegrain cereal foods can help address both nutritional challenges. Food quality issues are rancidity, coarse texture and negative consumer perceptions. Heat treatment of grain reduces wholegrain flour rancidity and improves storage life. Consumer education is key to successful introduction of wholegrain foods in SSA.Rockefeller Foundation.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcs2023-02-21hj2022Consumer ScienceFood Scienc

Bacterial community dynamics in lait caillé, a traditional product of spontaneous fermentation from Senegal

Spontaneously fermented food products contain a complex, natural microbial community with potential probiotic activity. The addition of a health-promoting, probiotic bacterium to these products ensures the delivery of that probiotic activity to consumers. Here, we assess the microbial community of a traditional Senegalese milk product produced by spontaneous fermentation, called lait caillé. We produced the lait caillé in a traditional way and added a probiotic starter containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus yoba 2012 to the traditional process. We found various species that are known for their ability to ferment milk, including species from the genera Lactobacillus, Acetobacter, Lactococcus, and Streptococcus. Our results show that the addition of L. rhamnosus to the inoculum, can result in detectable levels of this strain in the final product, ranging between 0.2 and 1 percent of the total bacterial population. Subsequent rounds of fermentation using passive back-slopping without the addition of new L. rhamnosus led to a loss of this strain from the community of fermenting bacteria. Our results suggest that the addition of probiotic strains at every fermentation cycle can enrich the existing complex communities of traditionally fermented lait caillé while traditional bacterial strains remain dominant in the bacterial communitie

Naturally Fermented Milk From Northern Senegal: Bacterial Community Composition and Probiotic Enrichment With Lactobacillus rhamnosus

A variety of foods fermented with lactic acid bacteria serve as dietary staples in many African communities; yet, their bacterial profiles are poorly characterized. The integration of health-promoting probiotics into naturally fermented milk products could make a profound impact on human health. Here, we characterize the bacterial community composition of a naturally fermented milk product (lait caillé) from northern Senegal, prepared in wooden bowls (lahals) with a bacterial biofilm to steer the fermentation process. We incorporated a probiotic starter culture containing the most documented probiotic strain Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (generic strain name yoba 2012) into the local fermentation process. Bar-coded 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of lait caillé samples indicated that the bacterial community of lait caillé has high species richness with over 100 bacterial genera; however, few have high abundance. In contrast to the diverse bacterial compositions of other characterized naturally fermented milk products, the composition of lait caillé predominantly consists of the lactic acid bacteria Streptococcus and Lactobacillus, resembling the bacterial composition in regular yogurt. The bacterial community composition of lait caillé varies geographically based on the presence of some genera, including Lactoccoccus, Enterococcus, Bifidobacterium, and Bacillus, but this trend is not consistent within production communities. The diversity of bacterial communities is much higher in the lahal biofilm than in the naturally fermented milk products, which is in turn greater than in commercial yogurts. Addition of a starter culture with L. Rhamnosus yoba 2012 to milk in lahals led to substantial growth of this probiotic bacterium during the fermentation process. Two independent quantitative PCR-analyses specific for L. Rhamnosus yoba 2012 indicated a 20-to 60-fold increase in the total number of probiotic bacteria in the first batch after inoculation. A similar increase of the probiotic was observed in a variation of lait caillé prepared with carbohydrate-rich millet granules (thiakry) added prior to fermentation. This study shows the feasibility of integrating health-promoting probiotic strains into naturally fermented foods produced in regions with a high prevalence of malnutrition

School meals and food systems: Rethinking the consequences for climate, environment, biodiversity, and food sovereignty

There is an urgent need to rethink our global food systems. The world is facing a nutrition crisis, and the way we produce and consume food is altering the equilibrium of our planet, causing environmental damage and biodiversity loss, and climate change which further compromises food security. Children are disproportionately affected, and school meals are being increasingly recognized as a key investment for governments to tackle these challenges. Through national school meals programs, around 418 million children currently receive a meal at school every day. This provides an exceptional opportunity for the implementation planet-friendly policies which have enormous co-benefits for child health and the wider society. To explore these opportunities, this White Paper was prepared by The Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, an initiative of The School Meals Coalition (SMC), a multilateral coalition of 95+ countries aiming to improve and expand national school meal programs for all children. The White Paper, written in collaboration with 85 organizations worldwide, explains how implementing planet-friendly school meal programs can provide far reaching co-benefits for public health and human capital. The paper proposes that to maximize the transformative potential of school meal programs, governments should focus on two sets of policies. First, those that can create immediate benefits for children and the planet, including: adopting nutritious, diverse, whole foods menus; switching to clean, efficient and sustainable energy for cooking; minimizing food and package waste; and empowering children by establishing life-long healthy and sustainable food habits through holistic food education. Secondly, leveraging the power of procurement, governments can create demand-driven changes to support sustainable ecological and regenerative agriculture practices, which promote biodiversity, resilience, and food sovereignty

Naturally Fermented Milk From Northern Senegal: Bacterial Community Composition and Probiotic Enrichment With Lactobacillus rhamnosus

A variety of foods fermented with lactic acid bacteria serve as dietary staples in many African communities; yet, their bacterial profiles are poorly characterized. The integration of health-promoting probiotics into naturally fermented milk products could make a profound impact on human health. Here, we characterize the bacterial community composition of a naturally fermented milk product (lait caillé) from northern Senegal, prepared in wooden bowls (lahals) with a bacterial biofilm to steer the fermentation process. We incorporated a probiotic starter culture containing the most documented probiotic strain Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (generic strain name yoba 2012) into the local fermentation process. Bar-coded 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of lait caillé samples indicated that the bacterial community of lait caillé has high species richness with over 100 bacterial genera; however, few have high abundance. In contrast to the diverse bacterial compositions of other characterized naturally fermented milk products, the composition of lait caillé predominantly consists of the lactic acid bacteria Streptococcus and Lactobacillus, resembling the bacterial composition in regular yogurt. The bacterial community composition of lait caillé varies geographically based on the presence of some genera, including Lactoccoccus, Enterococcus, Bifidobacterium, and Bacillus, but this trend is not consistent within production communities. The diversity of bacterial communities is much higher in the lahal biofilm than in the naturally fermented milk products, which is in turn greater than in commercial yogurts. Addition of a starter culture with L. rhamnosus yoba 2012 to milk in lahals led to substantial growth of this probiotic bacterium during the fermentation process. Two independent quantitative PCR-analyses specific for L. rhamnosus yoba 2012 indicated a 20- to 60-fold increase in the total number of probiotic bacteria in the first batch after inoculation. A similar increase of the probiotic was observed in a variation of lait caillé prepared with carbohydrate-rich millet granules (thiakry) added prior to fermentation. This study shows the feasibility of integrating health-promoting probiotic strains into naturally fermented foods produced in regions with a high prevalence of malnutrition

The whole grain manifesto : from green revolution to grain evolution

DATA AVAILABILITY : No data was used for the research described in the article.Grains have historically represented a major component of human diets and were predominantly consumed in whole form until the first half of the 19th century, when a combination of technological innovations and market dynamics made refined grains, hitherto a premium product, affordable and available to the masses. Grains still account for more than half of the total caloric intake among vulnerable populations worldwide, and their dominant consumption in refined form turns a nutrient-dense, protective food into a nutrient-poor one contributing to growing rates of obesity and noncommunicable disease. Shifting a substantial portion of global grain consumption to whole grains is potentially one of the most significant and achievable improvements to diets and food systems worldwide. In countries with significant micronutrient deficiencies, a switch from refined to fortified whole grain foods can enable institutional channels such as school feeding programs to measurably improve diet quality in a budget-neutral way.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/gfs2024-09-22hj2023Consumer ScienceFood Scienc