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SDSU research: DDG increases healthful fatty acids in milk

August 27th, 2008 -- Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

A program to groom leaders for southern African nations is also producing South Dakota State University research that could add value to dairy products.

Researcher Rosemary Nyoka of Zimbabwe is finding that supplementing the diets of grazing dairy cows with dried distillers grains or fishmeal could increase the level of healthful fatty acids in milk and milk products such as cheese.

“With this potential to improve the healthful fatty acids, we are finding additional uses for distillers grains,” Nyoka said. “We are also trying to improve profitability for dairy farmers. We are hoping they will be able to sell these products at a premium.”

Nyoka, is working towards a Ph.D. in dairy science at SDSU and is also a Fellow of the Kellogg Southern Africa Leadership, or KSAL, Program.

Viwe Mtshontshi, senior program officer from AED, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that administers the KSAL program, said the organization is very pleased with level of support given by the faculty in the SDSU Dairy Science Department.

“Nyoka’s chosen area of research meets one of the Kellogg Foundation, Africa Program goals — addressing the challenge of food security in southern Africa,” Mtshontshi said.

Nyoka’s research is evaluating the extent to which dietary manipulations can improve the levels of healthful fatty acids in milk.

“I’m supplementing cows on pasture with fishmeal and distillers grains to see how much these high-fat diets will improve the concentrations of the healthful fatty acids in the milk and dairy products,” Nyoka said. “I will analyze to see how much fatty acid has been added to the milk through the diet, and then I’ll process the milk and analyze to see how much fatty acid has been added and retained in the cheese.”

Nyoka is monitoring healthful fatty acids called conjugated linoleic acids, or CLAs.

“These CLAs are known now to have anti-carcinogenic properties, as well as anti-arthritis and anti-obesity properties. They’ve also been known to improve bone formation,” Nyoka said. “In general, in an average American diet we are eating maybe 1 gram per day of these fatty acids, while the effective levels known so far are like 3.5 grams of the fatty acids. So we see that in general, people are not getting enough.”

CLAs are found mainly in products from ruminant animals such as milk and meat. Milk typically contains between 0.3 grams and 0.6 grams of CLAs per 100 grams of fat, Nyoka said. But on her trial diets, Nyoka’s SDSU cows produced milk with total CLAs ranging from 2.5 to 5 grams.

“I’m grazing the cows on an alfalfa pasture, and then they get half their daily requirements from a supplement which is either soybean-based, distillers grains-based or fishmeal-based,” Nyoka said.

The soybean-based supplement is the control, since dairy producers commonly use it. The fishmeal- and distillers grains-based diets are Nyoka’s areas of interest.

“Now with the ethanol plants we have a lot of distillers grains, and it has high fat content. Most of the fat in the distillers grains are the unsaturated fatty acids, which are the major precursors for the CLAs,” Nyoka said. “So we want to see how the distillers grains will compare to the fishmeal, as well as to the control diet.”

Nyoka is including cheese in her research because one of her interests is in finding alternative, high-value products that farmers in Zimbabwe can more easily transport to market from remote locations.

As a government dairy officer in Zimbabwe, Nyoka not only helps dairy farmers troubleshoot production issues, she also works with dairy manufacturers. That’s one reason she is studying at SDSU, one of the few dairy science departments in the United States that includes both dairy production and dairy manufacturing under one roof.

Professor Arnold Hippen, Nyoka’s adviser, said one advantage of the SDSU program is that it gives international students a more holistic view of the dairy industry — from the care of the animal to the finished dairy product — while emphasizing animal nutrition.

Vikram Mistry, head of the SDSU Dairy Science Department, said Nyoka is the second Ph.D. student to come through SDSU as a Kellogg Foundation scholar from Africa. SDSU graduate Gaolebale Mpapho has already returned to Botswana after earning her Ph.D.

“We have always talked about how important we are in the dairy education world in the United States,” Mistry said. “This program gives us the opportunity to have an impact beyond our borders.”

Source: South Dakota State University (”http://www3.sdstate.edu/SDSU/NewsDetail45702.cfm?ID=46,6612“)

Socializing boosts health, happiness

August 26th, 2008 -- Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Research demonstrates the benefits of human interaction, while isolation is detrimental

As students’ summer classes and work schedules fill their days to the brim, many may feel that the time crunch requires them to neglect their social life.

But not spending enough time with family and friends can compromise human health, UCLA researchers have found.

“(Social contact with others) has effects on the body that are more powerful than cigarette smoking and your cholesterol level,” said Shelley Taylor, a distinguished professor of psychology. “The magnitude is very strong.”

These responses are uncovered by studying cortisol, a hormone that restores the body from the mobilized and tense feelings of stress back down to a normal state, Taylor said.

Understanding when and how often cortisol, which increases blood pressure and destabilizes the immune system, is released can provide information on stress levels and their harm to health.

“By the time you get to your late 20s and early 30s, you’re going to have some damage if there’s been enormous wear and tear on these systems,” Taylor said. “What social support does is it keeps those responses low so the cumulative damage is less.”

Other scientists have charted the effects of positive and negative social contact.

“People that report small social networks are much more likely to die compared to people that have broader, more diverse social networks,” said Ted Robles, an assistant professor of psychology, whose research focuses on the immunological effects of negative relationships.

When couples discuss problems in their relationship in a hostile way, their immune system is weakened so much that wounds on their skin can heal slower than those in couples with more positive relations, Robles said.

Brain chemistry also has a role in how socializing proves healthful.

The nucleus accumbens, a major reward circuit in the brain, is stimulated when one hears positive feedback from their friends, said Naomi Eisenberger, an assistant professor of psychology at UCLA.

“(This is) the same region that’s activated when a rat ingests cocaine or another addictive drug, the same region activated when you receive a lot of money,” Eisenberger said. “Rewarding events (with friends seem to) activate pretty primitive reward regions in the brain.”

Researchers said that these health effects might be linked to an evolutionary need to socialize in order to survive.

“Human beings’ subsistence over hundreds of thousands of years has been organized socially,” said Alan Fiske, a professor of anthropology at UCLA. “None of us could live very long by ourselves.”

But perhaps the easiest way to view the health effects of social contact is to look at those with limited social engagement or failed relationships, the researchers said.

“Social isolation is extremely toxic for mental and physical health,” Taylor said.

A similar, but more frequently experienced pain, is that of a broken connection, Fiske noted.

“Some of the most painful things are relationships that don’t work, or when you feel you’ve done something awful to someone,” he said. “People commit suicide because they’ve let down a group. Guilt (and) shame are (some of) the worst feelings.”

While some might struggle to equate being socially cut off to the flu or worse, a growing number of researchers are uncovering that the two are not as unlike as originally thought.

“It is ironic because other people carry the germs that make us sick,” Taylor said. “But it’s the socially isolated that often have the most difficulty health-wise.”

Source: UCLA Daily Bruin (http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2008/aug/25/socializing-boosts-health-happiness/)

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