They used new genetic sequencing techniques to find microbes that make enzymes that in turn can break down tough grasses into usable products.

Writing in the journal ScienceJan. 27, they said they took samples directly from the rumen – the organ in cattle that ferments and breaks down grass.

“Industry is seeking better ways to break down biomass to use as the starting material for a new generation of renewable biofuels,” said Eddy Rubin of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute in California, which led the study.

“Together with our collaborators, we are examining the molecular machinery used by microbes in the cow to break down plant material.”

HOLEY COW

To make sure they found the right microbes in action, they used a cow that had a hole surgically opened right into its rumen. The researchers needed to find the bacteria that worked in airless environments like a cow’s insides.

Rubin’s team used metagenomics, a gene-sequencing approach that maps the DNA of a community of organisms instead of one single creature or plant.

Metagenomics are being used to explore the microbes living in and on people, as well as by genome entrepreneur Craig Venter to catalogue all the tiniest creatures of the sea.

In this case, the goal was to find microbes that make enzymes that can efficiently break down the toughest fibres in switchgrass, a tough crop that can be used to produce ethanol and which can grow in places where food crops do not grow well.

But switchgrass is very tough to break down.

“Microbes have evolved over millions of years to efficiently degrade recalcitrant biomass,” Rubin said.

“Communities of these organisms can be found in diverse ecosystems, such as in the rumen of cows, the guts of termites, in compost piles, as well as covering the forest floor.”

Identifying the enzymes that give the tiny bacteria this power could make it easier to turn switchgrass and other plant products into fuel in factories.

The U.S. government offered $1.5 billion in October to help bring next-generation biofuels to market.

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It said efforts by the industry to regulate itself have failed and urged government to declare children a protected group and stop marketing efforts that are fuelling child obesity.

“What we found in the marketing data is a staggering amount of fast-food advertising that starts when children are as young as two years old,” said Jennifer Harris, of the university’s Rudd Center for Food Policy &Obesity.

Harris and colleagues spent a year studying 12 big fast-food chains; analyzed the calories, fat, sugar and sodium in menu items and kids’ meal combinations; and studied what children and teens ordered.

The report (available at www.fastfoodmarketing.org) finds the industry spent more than $4.2 billion in 2009 on marketing and advertising on TV, the Internet, social media sites and mobile applications.

“Despite pledges to improve their marketing practices, fastfood companies seem to be stepping up their efforts to target kids,” Harris said. “Today, preschoolers see 21 per cent more fast-food ads on TV than they saw in 2003, and somewhat older children see 34 per cent more.”

McDonald’s Corp. has 13 websites, attracting 365,000 unique child visitors under age 12 every month. One, ronald.com, specifically targets preschoolers.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says two-thirds of American adults and 15 per cent of children are overweight or obese. In some states, the childhood obesity rate is above 30 per cent.

HEALTHIER CHOICES

In 2007, McDonald’s and other large U.S. food and drink companies pledged to adopt stricter controls on advertising to children under 12.

“Most restaurants will say that they have added healthier choices to their menus in recent years,” said Yale’s Marlene Schwartz, who worked on the study. “In most cases you have to work very hard to get a healthy side or drink in a fastfood restaurant. You have to know it exists and you have to ask for it.”

Burger King said it “has strengthened its commitment in this area since 2007 by enhancing its nutrition criteria for advertised Kids Meals,” including lowered sodium. McDonald’s said it had kept its promises, including advertising a 375-calorie four-piece Chicken McNugget Happy Meal that comes with low-fat milk.

The researchers found that teenagers purchased 800 to 1,100 calories, or half a day’s worth, in an average visit. Yale’s Kelly Brownell said state and local governments can rein in the marketing behaviour of the restaurants, pointing to San Francisco’s recent law that cracks down on giving away toys in children’s meals.

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The findings are sure to disappoint many parents who have been trying to manage autism.

“It would have been wonderful for children with autism and their families if we found that the gluten-free, casein-free diet could really help, but this small study didn’t show significant benefits,” said Dr. Susan Hyman of the University of Rochester in New York, who led the study.

Gluten is the protein found in wheat , rye and other grains, while casein is a milk protein.

“The removal of gluten and casein from the diet of a controlled group of young children with autism, all of whom were screened for celiac disease … did not demonstrate a change in sleep habits, bowel habits, activity or core symptoms of autism,” Hyman said.

Autism includes a range of conditions, from the social awkwardness seen in Asperger’s syndrome to profound and severe disabilities. There is no cure and little information about treatments that work.

Hyman’s team studied the diet after seeing Internet reports from parents who believed they saw effects in their children. There is some evidence linking autism with some potential abnormality or activity in the intestines and theories suggest proteins absorbed in the bowels may affect autism symptoms.

They tested 14 children aged two to five, making sure they did not eat gluten or casein.

After at least four weeks on the strict diet, the children were randomly given snacks containing either gluten, casein, both or placebo in randomized order. The snacks were disguised so neither the child nor the caregiver knew they contained a “hidden” ingredient.

Parents, teachers and a research assistant filled out standardized surveys about each child’s behaviour the day before they received the snack, two hours after and 24 hours later, and the parents kept a diary throughout the experiment about eating, sleep and bowel habits.

The children were videotaped to assess social interaction.

There were no differences af ter the chal lenge, the researchers told the International Meeting for Autism Research in Philadelphia.

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The surprising findings should apply to other fresh vegetables and may offer insights into how to keep produce fresher longer, the researchers reported in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

They may also suggest ways to boost nutrients in fresh foods, said Gene Lester of the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. He said the idea for the experiment came to him when he was shopping.

Supermarkets often display fresh spinach in clear plastic containers at around 39F (4C) under fluorescent light 24 hours a day. Lester wondered if this was good or bad for the leaves.

“It is about time we asked some of these questions and do some of the science,” Lester said in a telephone interview.

His team kept fresh spinach leaves under continuous light or darkness for three to nine days.

Spinach kept under lights for as little as three days had significantly higher levels of vitamins C, K, E and folate, as well as more the colourful and healthful carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, they reported.

Leaves stored in the dark lost nutrients, Lester said. On refl ection, he said, the findings should not be surprising.

“These vitamins are basically in the plant for photosynthesis and we humans, being the biggest predator of plants, have evolved over time to utilize them as opposed to we having to manufacture them,” he said.

Even when picked, leafy greens continue to photosynthesize, Lester said. “As long as there is moisture in the leaves and as long as there is gas exchange and light, it is good to go whether they are picked or not,” he said.

His team chose fresh spinach as it is “arguably one of the most nutritionally complete vegetables commonly consumed.” A serving of spinach provides 20 per cent or more of the recommended dietary intake of vitamins C, A, B9, K and E.

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Since then, recall announcements have come daily, for a total of 290 so far. And in another new tack, the FDA is not telling people to throw out the products, merely to leave them unopened until it is clear what the risk is.

“If you don’t know what to do, leave them on the shelf and don’t eat them,” said David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the FDA.

Acheson admits he may never learn if the recall prevented any illnesses. “You never know in retrospect if you made a difference,” he told Reuters in an interview.

But food poisoning is very common in the United States. On April 9 the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report showing that efforts to improve food safety had stagnated since 2004, with virtually no decline in the numbers of salmonella cases last year compared with 2005 to 2007.

Acheson said the FDA is taking a new approach cautioning the public in part because of lessons learned in a series of high-profile outbreaks, and in part because of a push from acting FDA commissioner Dr. Josh Sharfstein, President Barack Obama’s choice to be deputy commissioner.

Acheson has been a regular speaker on media briefings and before Congress since an outbreak of salmonella in 2006 that killed three people and was traced to spinach. “We have been learning since then,” Acheson said.

The U. S. Department of Agriculture is responsible for meat and products but the FDA watches out for just about all other foods. It has been under heavy fire for the recent outbreaks traced to spinach, peppers and most lately, peanut products.

But when he announced he was nominating former New York health commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg to head FDA, Obama said the FDA has been underfunded and understaffed, with the ability to inspect barely 7,000 out of 150,000 food-processing plants and warehouses every year.

PEANUT RECALL

So the FDA has rel ied heavily on state inspectors and on the companies themselves. The weakness of this approach became clear when Peanut Corporation of America shipped peanut products from two plants despite having found salmonella.

These contaminated products have sickened more than 600 people, may have helped kill nine and forced the recall of 3,200 products from snacks to ice cream.

It was the biggest food recall ever seen, but Acheson said it paid off when salmonella was found in a packet of recalled Kellogg Co. Austin snack crackers.

With the pistachios, FDA did not wait. When company testing showed salmonella in nuts packed by Californiabased Setton Pistachio, the recall was immediate.

“It was done out of context of sickness, which is better than reacting to 600 people being sick,” Acheson told Reuters.

“I’m in no doubt it’s the right thing to do.”

Acheson is also hoping to get new resources from Congress. “We have been talking to Congress for some time about new powers, new authority,” he said.

While nothing happened in the last session, Acheson said it appeared the current Congress appears ready to make some changes. “I am hopeful,” he said.

Lawmakers including Representative Rosa DeLauro, who heads a house subcommittee overseeing food safety, have introduced legislation this year to improve food safety oversight. The bills focus largely on giving the FDA more funding and power, such as the ability to conduct a mandatory recall.

There have also been calls to set up a new food safety agency separate from FDA and USDA.

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The worst effects will be in the regions where the poorest people already live – the tropics and subtropics, the researchers wrote in the journal Science. But temperate regions will see very warm average temperatures, they added.

“In temperate regions, the hottest seasons on record will represent the future norm in many locations,” David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor, and Rosamond Naylor, director of Food Security and the Environment at California’s Stanford University, wrote in their report.

The two combined direct observations with data from 23 global climate models. They found a greater than a 90 per cent probability that by 2100, growing-season low temperatures in the tropics and subtropics will be higher than the highest current temperatures.

“We are taking the worst of what we’ve seen historically and saying that in the future it is going to be a lot worse unless there is some kind of adaptation,” Naylor said.

There have been some recent tastes of what is to come, such as a heat wave that struck Europe in summer 2003 and resulted in deaths and reduced food production, they said.

Record temperatures hurt key crops including maize and fruit and accelerated crop ripening by 10 to 20 days. Livestock were stressed, the soil was dryer and more water was used in agriculture, they said.

Italy experienced a record drop in maize yields of 36 per cent from a year earlier, and in France maize and fodder production fell by 30 per cent, fruit harvests declined by 25 per cent and wheat harvests declined by 21 per cent, they wrote.

“I think what startled me the most is that when we looked at our historic examples there were ways to address the problem within a given year. People could always turn somewhere else to find food,” Naylor said. “But in the future there’s not going to be any place to turn unless we rethink our food supplies.”

Battisti said three billion people live in the areas that will be worst affected. The researchers urged investment in development of crop varieties that can withstand higher heat.

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