Breakthroughs Today

It always pays to read more about food if you are concerned with your own health and well-being. Science and technology have brought us so much we have no means of learning them all. Despite that, the risk of ignorance can be costly in fact even to your life. The mysterious "un-sub" (unknown substance) we cover this week is one of these. OUR mysterious substance (sub) in drinks, particularly soft drinks, has no “satiety impact” despite its “being” a carbohydrate, as mentioned in a previous outing in Breakthroughs. That makes us suspect that this substance is not a natural carbohydrate because carbohydrates by nature fill you up.   The substance is not new to me. I often encountered it in labels but never suspected there is something more to it. The name is as innocent as any other simple sugar I encountered during my med-tech days. When I stumbled upon it in studies I reviewed lately, the study results surprised me. In (food) labels, the substance is cal

ZOSIMO T. LITERATUS, RMT Two outbreaks of petfood-associated renal failure occurred in 2004 (involving around 6,000 dogs and a smaller number of cats) and 2007 (involving a large number of dogs and cats in North America). In 2004, the outbreak was linked to the ingestion of specific commercial dog foods, and occurred in dogs from Asia. Health authorities attributed it to poisonous compounds (particularly ochratoxin, citrinin, or both) that contaminated raw materials in a manufacturing plant in Thailand. In 2007, on the heel of another renal failure outbreak associated with pet foods, North American health authorities identified the toxic compounds as melamine and cyanuric acid; both are present in wheat gluten, rice protein, and corn gluten imported from China and used as a pet food ingredient. Able to elevate falsely the measure of protein content in pet foods because of its high nitrogen content, melamine was presumed to have been intentionally added by suppliers in China. Two studie