Chocolate’s tasty flavors might pose a risk in other desserts

Genotoxic substances in baked sweets?

03-Jun-2024 - What makes chocolate taste and smell so delicious? Chemistry, of course! A variety of molecules work together to create that unmistakable aroma, but those same molecules might carry some unwanted health effects if there are too many around. According to research published in ACS’ Journal of ...

Salmonella Detection

Simple Colorimetric Sensor Rapidly Detects Food Contamination Using a Nucleic Acid Probe

19-Apr-2023 - A team of researchers have developed an easy-to-use colorimetric assay for the detection of food contaminated with salmonella. The assay is based on a novel nucleic acid probe that is cleaved by an RNase enzyme specific to the salmonella species. As the team report in the journal Angewandte ...

Food decontamination spray deploys "billions of tiny soldiers"

Researchers harness bacteria-eating viruses to create a powerful new weapon against contamination and infection

08-Dec-2022 - Researchers at McMaster University have created a powerful new weapon against bacterial contamination and infection. They have developed a way to coax bacteriophages – harmless viruses that eat bacteria – into linking together and forming microscopic beads. Those beads can safely be applied to ...

Structure of wheat immune protein resolved

Important tool in the battle for food security

29-Sep-2022 - Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research and the University of Cologne in Germany together with colleagues from China have unravelled how wheat protects itself from a deadly pathogen. Their findings, published in the journal Nature, could be harnessed to make important ...

Sniffing out carcinogens in foodstuffs

Andrea Hochegger, an analytical chemist at TU Graz, investigates whether foodstuffs can be tainted with harmful substances from packaging or during production

27-Sep-2022 - Andrea Hochegger’s current research focus is the question of contamination with mineral oil hydrocarbons. “We break up complex mixtures into MOSH and MOAH fractions,” Andrea explains. These are groups of chemical compounds found in mineral oil. MOSH stands for mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons ...

Consumption of extra virgin olive oil during pregnancy increases the level of antioxidants in breast milk and in offspring

13-Jul-2022 - The consumption of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) —a product with widely known benefits for our health— increases the level of phenolic compounds in breast milk and can cross the placental barrier, reaching the descendant. This has been stated in a study carried out by a team of the Faculty of ...

Biofilms - an invisible threat to food safety

Hotspots for biofilms

08-Jul-2020 - Biofilms are potential sources of contamination in the food industry. A recent study by the FFoQSI Competence Center at the Vetmeduni Vienna investigated where they hide and what bacteria can be found in them. Biofilms can cause additional costs in production and are a source of danger to ...

Common diarrhoea pathogen unknown to many people

15-May-2019 - Salmonella, genetically modified foods and microplastics in food head the awareness scale of health and consumer topics in Germany. Despite this, more than three quarters of Germans regard food as safe. This is the result of the latest Consumer Monitor - a representative population survey carried ...

Electric shocks used to kill bacteria

Electric fields destroy Listeria without damaging nutrients

25-Oct-2018 - Low temperatures and an acidic environment create the ideal conditions for applying an effective method of inactivating Listeria (and other germs) in the processing of whey protein solutions – without destroying valuable nutrients. A team from the University of Natural Resources and Life ...

Germs in the kitchen: Salmonella better known than Campylobacter

06-Oct-2017 - What health risks are consumers aware of? What are they concerned about? The answers to these questions are provided by the BfR Consumer Monitor, a representative population survey conducted regularly by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR). On the one hand it reflects the ...