PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Illinois scientists put cancer-fighting power back into frozen broccoli

2013-08-06
(Press-News.org) URBANA, Ill. – There was bad news, then good news from University of Illinois broccoli researchers this month. In the first study, they learned that frozen broccoli lacks the ability to form sulforaphane, the cancer-fighting phytochemical in fresh broccoli. But a second study demonstrated how the food industry can act to restore the frozen vegetable's health benefits.

"We discovered a technique that companies can use to make frozen broccoli as nutritious as fresh. That matters because many people choose frozen veggies for their convenience and because they're less expensive," said Elizabeth Jeffery, a U of I professor of nutrition.

"Whenever I've told people that frozen broccoli may not be as nutritious as fresh broccoli, they look so downcast," she added.

As little as three to five servings of broccoli a week provides a cancer-protective benefit, but that isn't true for bags of broccoli that you pluck out of your grocery's freezer, she noted.

The problem begins when soon-to-be-frozen broccoli is blanched, or heated to high temperatures, to inactivate enzymes that can cause off-colors, tastes, and aromas during the product's 18-month shelf life, she explained.

The extreme heat destroys the enzyme myrosinase, which is necessary to form sulforaphane, the powerful cancer-preventive compound in broccoli, she said.

"We know this important enzyme is gone because in our first study we tested three commercially frozen broccoli samples before and after cooking. There was very little potential to form sulforaphane before the frozen broccoli was cooked and essentially none after it was cooked as recommended," said Edward B. Dosz, a graduate student in Jeffery's laboratory.

In the second study, the researchers experimented with blanching broccoli at slightly lower temperatures instead of at 86ºC, the current industry standard. When they used a temperature of 76ºC, 82 percent of the enzyme myrosinase was preserved without compromising food safety and quality.

Sulforaphane is formed when fresh broccoli is chopped or chewed, bringing its precursor glucoraphanin and the enzyme myrosinase into contact with each other. The researchers first thought that thawing frozen broccoli in the refrigerator might rupture the plant's cells and kick-start the enzyme–substrate interaction. It didn't work, Dosz said.

But they had previously had success using other food sources of myrosinase to boost broccoli's health benefits. So the researchers decided to expose frozen broccoli to myrosinase from a related cruciferous vegetable.

When they sprinkled 0.25 percent of daikon radish—an amount that's invisible to the eye and undetectable to our taste buds—on the frozen broccoli, the two compounds worked together to form sulforaphane, Dosz said.

"That means that companies can blanch and freeze broccoli, sprinkle it with a minute amount of radish, and sell a product that has the cancer-fighting component that it lacked before," he said.

One question remained: Would sulforaphane survive the heat of microwave cooking? "We were delighted to find that the radish enzyme was heat stable enough to preserve broccoli's health benefits even when it was cooked for 10 minutes at 120ºF. So you can cook frozen broccoli in the microwave and it will retain its cancer-fighting capabilities," Dosz said.

Jeffery hopes that food processors will be eager to adopt this process so they can market frozen broccoli that has all of its original nutritional punch.

Until they do, she said that consumers can spice up their frozen, cooked broccoli with another food that contains myrosinase to bring the cancer-fighting super-food up to nutritional speed.

"Try teaming frozen broccoli with raw radishes, cabbage, arugula, watercress, horseradish, spicy mustard, or wasabi to give those bioactive compounds a boost," she advised.

### Jeffery and Dosz of the U of I's Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition co-authored both studies. Commercially produced frozen broccoli lacks the ability to form sulforaphane was published in the Journal of Functional Foods and is available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464613000510. USDA and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) funded this research.

Modifying the processing and handling of frozen broccoli for increased sulforaphane formation appears in the Journal of Food Science and can be viewed online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291750-3841/earlyview. Sakata Vegetables Europe supported this study.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Let's have lunch! -- teachers eating with their students provides nutrition education opportunities

2013-08-06
Philadelphia, PA, August 6, 2013 – Much attention has focused on school meals, both in the United States and across the globe. Researchers at Uppsala University, Sweden, evaluated teachers eating lunch with the school children. In Sweden, this practice is referred to as "pedagogic meals" because it offers the opportunity of having children learn by modeling adults. The researchers wanted to observe how the teachers interacted with the children during meals in order to better understand how to interpret results of this practice. The study is published in the September/October ...

Localized wind power blowing more near homes, farms & factories

2013-08-06
RICHLAND, Wash. -- Americans are increasingly installing wind turbines near their homes, farms and businesses to generate their own energy, concludes a new report released today. The 2012 Market Report on Wind Technologies in Distributed Applications is the first comprehensive analysis on a growing field called distributed wind, which involves generating wind energy close to where it will be used instead of purchasing power from large, centralized wind farms. Distributed wind can range from a small, solitary turbine in someone's backyard to several large turbines that ...

Liver transplant patients have high rates of metabolic syndrome

2013-08-06
MAYWOOD, Il. – Nearly 59 percent of liver transplant patients experience metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes, according to a study lead by liver specialist Eric R. Kallwitz, MD, of Loyola University Medical Center. But despite this high risk, exercise might be a key in preventing metabolic syndrome – and the intensity of exercise might be more important than the duration. The study is published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation ...

Exercise may reduce heart disease risk in liver transplant recipients

2013-08-06
New research reveals that metabolic syndrome—risk factors that can lead to heart disease and/or stroke—is common in liver transplant recipients, with rates highest at one year following the procedure. Findings published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, indicate that exercise could reduce complications from metabolic disease in patients post-transplantation. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute suggests that obesity, physical inactivity, and insulin ...

Altering organic molecules' interaction with light

2013-08-06
Enhancing and manipulating the light emission of organic molecules is at heart of many important technological and scientific advances, including in the fields of organic light emitting devices, bio-imaging, bio-molecular detection. Researchers at MIT have now discovered a new platform that enables dramatic manipulation of the emission of organic molecules when simply suspended on top of a carefully designed planar slab with a periodic array of holes: so-called photonic crystal surface. Influenced by the fast and directional emission channels (called 'resonances') provided ...

Scientists discover key to easing aquaculture's reliance on wild-caught fish

2013-08-06
BALTIMORE, MD (August 6, 2013)— For the first time scientists have been able to develop a completely vegetarian diet that works for marine fish raised in aquaculture, the key to making aquaculture a sustainable industry as the world's need for protein increases. The findings led by Aaron Watson and Allen Place at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Institute for Marine and Environmental Technology, are published in the August issue of the journal Lipids. "Aquaculture isn't sustainable because it takes more fish to feed fish than are being produced," ...

A layer of tiny grains can slow sound waves

2013-08-06
In some ways, granular material — such as a pile of sand — can behave much like a crystal, with its close-packed grains mimicking the precise, orderly arrangement of crystalline atoms. Now researchers at MIT have pushed that similarity to a new limit, creating two-dimensional arrays of micrograins that can funnel acoustic waves, much as specially designed crystals can control the passage of light or other waves. The researchers say the findings could lead to a new way of controlling frequencies in electronic devices such as cellphones, but with components that are only ...

Does physician verbal abuse create a bad working environment -- or the reverse?

2013-08-06
A recent study by the RN Work Project found that newly licensed registered nurses (NLRNs) who were verbally abused by nursing colleagues reported lower job satisfaction, unfavorable perceptions of their work environment, and greater intent to leave their current jobs. Now, a new study by the same research team finds that high levels of physician verbal abuse are closely associated with more negative work environments. The RN Work Project is a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The study found that nurses who experienced high (more than five times in the last ...

High-speed camera captures dancing droplets for scientific 'photo album,' study

2013-08-06
ITHACA, N.Y. – The splash from rain hitting a windowpane or printer ink hitting paper all comes down to tiny droplets hitting a surface, and what each of those droplets does. Cornell University researchers have produced a high-resolution "photo album" of more than 30 shapes an oscillated drop of water can take. The results, a fundamental insight into how droplets behave, could have applications in everything from inkjet printing to microfluidics. Susan Daniel, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, led the study, to be published in Physical Review ...

Celiac disease patients with ongoing intestine damage at lymphoma risk

2013-08-06
NEW YORK—Patients with celiac disease who had persistent intestine damage (identified with repeat biopsy) had a higher risk of lymphoma than patients whose intestines healed, according to findings published in the August 6, 2013, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. Celiac disease is a common autoimmune disease, affecting approximately one percent of individuals in Western nations. It is characterized by damage to the lining of the small intestine that over time reduces the body's ability to absorb components of common foods. The damage is due to a reaction to eating ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Heat and heavy metals are changing the way that bees buzz

What’s behind the enormous increase in early-onset gastrointestinal cancers?

Pharmacogenomics expert advances precision medicine for bipolar disorder

Brazilian researcher explores centenarian stem cells for aging insights

Dr. Xuyu Qian's breakthrough analysis of 18 million brain cells advances understanding of human brain development

Gene networks decode human brain architecture from health to glioma

How artificial light at night damages brain health and metabolism

For ultrasound, ultra-strength not always a good thing

Matching your workouts to your personality could make exercising more enjoyable and give you better results

Study shows people perceive biodiversity

Personality type can predict which forms of exercise people enjoy

People can accurately judge biodiversity through sight and sound

People diagnosed with dementia are living longer, global study shows

When domesticated rabbits go feral, new morphologies emerge

Rain events could cause major failure of Waikīkī storm drainage by 2050

Breakthrough in upconversion luminescence research: Uncovering the energy back transfer mechanism

Hidden role of 'cell protector' opens cancer treatment possibilities

How plants build the microbiome they need to survive in a tough environment

Depression due to politics and its quiet danger to democracy addressed in new book 'The Sad Citizen'

International experts and patients unite to help ensure all patients are fully informed before consenting to new surgical procedures

Melting glaciers could trigger more explosive eruptions globally, finds research

Nearly half of U.S. grandchildren live within 10 miles of a grandparent

Study demonstrates low-cost method to remove CO₂ from air using cold temperatures, common materials

Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI) welcomes 13 students to prestigious Summer Fellowship program

Mass timber could elevate hospital construction

A nuanced model of soil moisture illuminates plant behavior and climate patterns

$2.6 million NIH grant backs search for genetic cure in deadly heart disease

Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis program changed drastically when anxiety was added as a qualifying condition

1 in 5 overweight adults could be reclassified with obesity according to new framework

Findings of study on how illegally manufactured fentanyl enters U.S. contradict common assumptions, undermining efforts to control supply

[Press-News.org] Illinois scientists put cancer-fighting power back into frozen broccoli