The forgotten role of food cultures

Fermentation is one of if not the oldest food processing technique, yet it is still an emerging field when it comes to its numerous mechanisms of action and potential applications. The effect of microbial activity on the taste, bioavailability and preservation of the nutrients and the different food matrices has been deciphered by the insights of molecular microbiology. Among those roles of fermentation in the food chain, biopreservation remains the one most debated. Presumably because it has been underestimated for quite a while, and only considered - based on a food safety and technological approach - from the toxicological and chemical perspective. Biopreservation is not considered as a traditional use, where it has been by design - but forgotten - as the initial goal of fermentation. The 'modern' use of biopreservation is also slightly different from the traditional use, due mainly to changes in cooling of food and other ways of preservation, Extending shelf life is considered to be one of the properties of food additives, classifying - from our perspective - biopreservation wrongly and forgetting the role of fermentation and food cultures. The present review will summarize the current approaches of fermentation as a way to preserve and protect the food, considering the different way in which food cultures and this application could help tackle food waste as an additional control measure to ensure the safety of the food

Rapid northern hemisphere ice sheet melting during the penultimate deglaciation

The research was funded by HIDROPAST (CGL2010-16376) OPERA (CTM2013-48639-C2-1-R) and CHIMERA (CTM2016-75411-R) all to HMS, IC, and AM, and ETH core funding to HS. JT and MI were funded by doctoral FPI fellowships of CTM2013-48639-C2-1-R, and OK by doctoral Fellowship ETH-13 18-1. CP and HC acknowledge NSFC Grant 41888101, AM acknowledges CGL2016-77479-R, and R.L.E acknowledges NSF 1702816 and the 111 program of China grant D19002. IC and JT acknowledge Generalitat de Catalunya Grups de Recerca Consolidats grant 2017 SGR 315 to GRC Geociències Marines, and IC acknowledges the ICREA-Academia programme from the Generalitat de Catalunya and PID2019-105523RB-I00. EG is funded by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (R1/180317).The rate and consequences of future high latitude ice sheet retreat remain a major concern given ongoing anthropogenic warming. Here, new precisely dated stalagmite data from NW Iberia provide the first direct, high-resolution records of periods of rapid melting of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets during the penultimate deglaciation. These records reveal the penultimate deglaciation initiated with rapid century-scale meltwater pulses which subsequently trigger abrupt coolings of air temperature in NW Iberia consistent with freshwater-induced AMOC slowdowns. The first of these AMOC slowdowns, 600-year duration, was shorter than Heinrich 1 of the last deglaciation. Although similar insolation forcing initiated the last two deglaciations, the more rapid and sustained rate of freshening in the eastern North Atlantic penultimate deglaciation likely reflects a larger volume of ice stored in the marine-based Eurasian Ice sheet during the penultimate glacial in contrast to the land-based ice sheet on North America as during the last glacial.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe