Consumers’ views and use of labels on food items sold in Bulawayo urban province, Zimbabwe

Food labels are a medium by which consumers acquire knowledge about packaged foods they are considering to purchase. The label makes the first impression about a product and has a great effect on the purchasing decision for consumers. In recent years, literate consumers have become interested in nutritional issues. Lifestyle, age, dietary and safety concerns have been the contributing factors to nutritional awareness by consumers. Nutritional labels can generally have a positive impact on food consumption and may save health-care costs for those consumers with health concerns. On the other hand, for those consumers who are illiterate, price may be more important in making purchase decisions. This study intended to investigate how consumers in Bulawayo Urban Province (Zimbabwe) view and use labels on packaged food items. Seventy-five randomly selected consumers were questioned about their perceptions, attitudes and use of label information using open ended structured questionnaires. The consumers were selected on the basis of being present at the supermarkets at the time of sampling. The respondents were interviewed at different times of the day to cater for employed and unemployed people. The results obtained indicate that the extent to which food labels are used depends on factors such as price of food products, individual health needs and gender. For consumers who use food labels to make their purchase decisions, not all the information on the label is considered. Items on the labels to which the consumers responded were brand, nutritional profile and mass of product in relation to the price. The label elements which were extensively used by consumers in this study are date mark (81.3%), weight of food (89.3%) and price (77.3%). The least used element is the nutritional panel (50.7%). About 44% of the consumers were not sure about the trustworthiness of the information given on food labels. Food labels are important to a greater extent for people with special dietary requirements, while the remainder of the studied population are influenced by price in their purchase decisions. Consumers seem not to understand some of the information on the food labels because of the difficulties in interpreting what is written.Keywords: Consumer, packaged food, labels, nutrition, nutritional panel, perceptions, purchase, behaviou

Can requirements be creative? Experiences with an enhanced air space management system

Requirements engineering is a creative process in which stakeholders work together to create ideas for new software systems that are eventually expressed as requirements. This paper reports a workshop that integrated creativity techniques with different types of use case and system context modeling to discover stakeholder requirements for EASM, a future air space management software system to enable the more effective, longer-term planning of UK and European airspace use. The workshop was successful in that it provided a range of outputs that were later assessed for their novelty and usefulness in the final specification of the EASM software. The paper describes the workshop structure, gives examples of outputs from it, and uses these results to answer 2 research questions about the utility of creativity techniques and workshops that had not been answered in previous research

Consolidated PGIS Report for Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe, the Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) data collection exercise for the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF‐L1) was done in three districts that fall within the confines of the Limpopo River Basin. These districts are Insiza, Matobo and Gwanda which are all found in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland South province. In all the districts data collection was done at two levels, in which the first level entailed conducting interviews and focused group discussions with the district stakeholders. The second level of data collection entailed conducting focused group discussions with the selected communities. Three PGIS team members facilitated the data collection exercise with the support from the provincial Agritex office. The main objective of the PGIS data collection exercise was to identify successful cases on Agricultural Water Management technologies that have been implemented in these districts and hence develop a clear understanding of what made these technologies successful from a variety of viewpoints. The identified technologies were described in terms of adoption, adaptation and contribution to livelihoods among the rural communities. Key stakeholders were invited to attend the data collection exercise at the district level. These included District Administrators, Rural District Councils, AGRITEX, NGOs and other government line ministries operational in these districts. At the community level, a specified number of farmers involved in the identified projects were invited to attend the focus group discussions. This report gives a consolidated outline of the intervention technologies that were identified in these three districts and further gives a reflection on some of the lessons learnt during field work which could be of benefit for similar data collection work in the other countries within the Limpopo River Basin. Briefly the main intervention technologies identified were: conservation agriculture in Insiza district, sand water abstraction in Matobo district and fodder production in Gwanda district

Effect of Acacia angustissima leaf meal on performance, yield of carcass components and meat quality of broilers

The study determined the appropriate levels of including Acacia angustissima leaf meal in broiler diets for optimum performance, carcass part yield, and meat quality characteristics. One hundred and fifty broiler chicks were allocated to 0%, 5%, and 10% A. angustissima leaf meal-based diets in a completely randomized design, with five replicates per treatment. Weekly feed intake and live weights were measured. Weekly weight gains and feed conversion ratios were calculated. At six weeks, two birds per replicate were slaughtered and dressed. Carcass and portion yields were determined. Breast proximate components, CIELAB colour variations, cooking loss and shear force were estimated. Consumer preferences for colour, aroma, taste, flavour and tenderness were determined. Voluntary feed intake (VFI), weekly weight gain, weekly live weights and feed conversion ratios (FCR) were the same across treatments at two weeks. At weeks 4 and 6, the control and 5% groups outperformed the 10% group. Increasing dietary leaf meal had no effect on dressing out percentage, but decreased carcass weight from 1456 g to 1060 g, breast yield from 36.83% to 32.69%, breast meat to bone ratio from 4.77% to 2.94%, and proportion of drumstick skin from 11.57% to 7.92%. It also resulted in increased yield of thighs from 14.63% to 15.97%, proportion of thigh skin from 11.50% to 14.31% and breast skin proportion from 5.37% to 7.95%. The leaf meal had no effect on the proximate components of breast meat. The L* values decreased from 53.66 to 49.23; the b* values increased from 12.93 to 19.97; shear force increased from 14.14 N to 14.54 N; and cooking loss increased from 5.95% to 7.64% with increasing leaf meal levels. It was concluded that up to 5% A. angustissima leaf meal inclusion has no negative effect on performance, yield of carcass parts and meat quality characteristics of broilers.Keywords: Breast, colour, cooking loss, shear force, tast

Upgrading wineries to biorefineries within a Circular Economy perspective: An Italian case study

In the challenge of transforming waste into useful products that can be re-used in a circular perspective, Italian wine industry can represent a suitable model for the application of the bioeconomy principles, including the valorisation of the agricultural and food waste. In the present study, a comprehensive environmental assessment of the traditional production of wine was performed and the potentiality of a biorefinery system, based on winery waste and aimed at recovering useful bio-based products, such as grapeseed oil and calcium tartrate, was examined through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The wine company "I Borboni", producing Asprinio wine in the Campania Region (Italy), was proposed as a case study. The hotspots of the linear production system were identified and the bottling phase, in particular the production of packaging glass, resulted to contribute to the generation of impacts at 63%, on average, versus 14.3% of the agricultural phase and 22.7% of the vinification phase. The LCA results indicated human carcinogenic toxicity, freshwater eutrophication and fossil resource scarcity impact categories as the most affected ones, with normalized impacts amounting to 9.22E-03, 3.89E-04 and 2.64E-04, respectively. Two side production chains (grapeseed oil and tartrate production) were included and circular patterns were designed and introduced in the traditional production chain with the aim of valorising the winery residues and improving the overall environmental performance. By implementing the circular approach, environmental impacts in the global warming, freshwater eutrophication and mineral resource scarcity impact categories, in particular, resulted three times lower than in the linear system. The results achieved demonstrated that closing the loops in the wine industry, through the reuse of bio-based residues alternatively to fossil-based inputs within the production process, and integrating the traditional production system with new side production chains led to an upgrade of the wineries to biorefineries, towards more sustainable production patterns. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Utilization of sorghum grain in high energy beef finish diets

A JASSA study on animal nutrition to achieve better quality beef in the cattle- rearing agricultural sector in Zimbabwe.A study was carried out in July 1996 to assess the potential of sorghum grain (high tannin) in high energy beef finishing diets. The effect of polyethylene glycol (PEG) on the utilization of sorghum grain based diets was also examined. Forty steers were blocked by weight and then randomly allocated to five treatments. One group was assigned to direct slaughter. The remaining groups were offered the following diets containing 33 percent grain: 1.100 percent maize (100M); 2.50 percent maize: 50 percent sorghum (50M:50S); 3.100 percent sorghum (100S); 4. 100 percent sorghum + 3g PEG per day (100S PEG). Dry matter and metabilizable energy (ME) intake were highest with 50M:50S and lowest (P<0.01) with the 100S PEG diet. Steers on the 50M:50S diet had the highest (P<0.05) growth rates and carcass gains. PEG did not improve the utilization of the high tannin sorghum grain

Vitamin D: the role of the sunshine vitamin

The importance of vitamin D in physical disorders has been well documented. Deficiency in this vitamin is associated with a wide range of physical and mental disorders that include, heart problems, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, various cancers, and asthma. In mental health vitamin D deficiency is associated with schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease among others. Risk factors for vitamin D deficiency include darker skin, lack of adequate sun exposure, autoimmune diseases, influenza, old age and the use of certain medicines like anticonvulsants. Vitamin D is likely to play an important role in the management and prevention of various mental health problems. In particular, adequate vitamin D during the perinatal stage is likely to impact positively on the long term mental health of a person

Antibacterial properties of the methanol extract of helichrysum pedunculatum

The methanol extract of Helichrisum pedunculatum was screened for antimicrobial activity up to a concentration of 5 mg/ml using the agar dilution technique. A number of test bacterial isolates, comprising both Gram negative and Gram positive organisms were susceptible to the crude extract of the plant. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of the extract ranged between 1 and 5 mg/ml for the susceptible organisms. The MICs of the selected antibiotics, chloramphenicol and penicillin, ranged between 2 and 4 mg/L, and 2 and 32 mg/L respectively against Bacillus cereus, Proteus vulgaris and Staphylococcus aureus OKOH1. Bactericidal activity was determined by the time kill assay. The methanol extract of the plant was not bactericidal at 1 × MIC for B. cereus, P. vulgaris and Staph. aureus OKOH1. At 2 × MIC the extract was bacteriostatic against B. cereus but bactericidal against P. vulgaris and Staph. aureus OKOH1. Combination studies were done at 1/2 × MIC, 1 × MIC and 2 × MIC of the plant extract with 1 × MIC of the antibiotics. Combinations of the plant extract and chloramphenicol resulted in mostly indifferent interactions against P. vulgaris and Staph. aureus OKOH1 but synergistic interactions at higher concentration of the plant extract for B. cereus. Penicillin combinations gave synergistic interactions at lower concentrations of the plant for P.vulgaris and Staph. aureus OKOH1 but was mostly indifferent for B. cereus

People’s understanding of TB in a setting of high HIV/TB prevalence: case studies in Gugulethu Township, Western Cape Province

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS)Tuberculosis (TB) infection is present in many people but it is sometimes latent until one’s immune system is compromised. As such, it increasingly manifests in people, especially those whose immune system has been compromised by e.g. HIV, as an opportunistic disease. TB is thus closely interlinked with HIV and efforts to eradicate TB have been integrated with the fight against HIV in South Africa. The study revealed that factors such as poverty and stigma - be it enacted or perceived - has an impact on how people with TB deal with the burden of having the disease. Using qualitative research as the choice of methodology and collecting data using observations, in-depth interviews and structured interviews among 18 participants the study focused on the ways in which people understand TB in an area that is known to have high HIV prevalence. The researcher explored people’s experiences with TB and investigated their understanding of the disease as well as explored how people on Directly Observed Treatment Strategy (DOTS) make sense of and interact with this programme in Gugulethu Township. During the study it emerged that people have significant understanding of TB and its symptoms but their initial reaction to those symptoms is selfmedication and this results in delayed treatment seeking. TB is stigmatised in Gugulethu despite some people acknowledging that the environment itself is partly to blame for the rapid spread of the disease. The study revealed that there is good healthcare provision in Gugulethu and it is accessible but the burden of suffering from TB is a difficult one that requires family support, financial support and good relations with clinic and hospital staff in order for one to adhere to treatment and recover from TB