̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Esther Edwardes Moore

Ultra-processed food makes up almost two-thirds of calorie intake of UK adolescents

cjb250 — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 01:30:13 +0000

̽��ֱ��study found that UPF consumption was highest among adolescents from deprived backgrounds, those of white ethnicity, and younger adolescents.

UPFs are food items that are manufactured from industrial substances and contain additives such as preservatives, sweeteners, colourings, flavourings, and emulsifiers. UPFs vary greatly, but tend to indicate poor dietary quality, with higher levels of added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium, as well as decreased fibre, protein, and micronutrient content. They have been suggested as one of the key drivers of the global rise in diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

Globally, the availability and sales of UPFs have increased over time and previous evidence suggests that this has led to increased consumption among adolescents. To look at trends within the UK, researchers from Cambridge and Bristol analysed data from four-day food diaries of almost 3,000 adolescents in the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey between 2008/09 and 2018/19.

In research published today in the European Journal of Nutrition, the researchers found that a mean of 66% of adolescents’ energy intake came from UPF consumption during this period, though there was a slight fall from 68% to 63% between 2008/09 and 2018/2019.

Parents’ occupation, ethnic group and UK region all influenced the proportion of calorie intake from UPFs:

Adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds consumed a higher proportion of their calorie intake from UPFs compared to adolescents from less disadvantaged backgrounds (68.4% compared with 63.8%).
Adolescents from a non-white ethnicity consumed a lower proportion of their calorie intake from UPFs (59.0% compared with 67.3%).
Adolescents living in the North of England consumed a higher proportion of their calorie intake from UPFs compared with those living in the South of England and London (67.4% compared with 64.1%).
18-year-olds consumed a lower proportion of their calorie intake from UPFs compared with 11-year-olds (63.4% compared with 65.6%).

Dr Yanaina Chavez-Ugalde from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the study’s first author, said: “Adolescents’ food patterns and practices are influenced by many factors, including their home environment, the marketing they are exposed to and the influence of their friends and peers. But adolescence is also an important time in our lives where behaviours begin to become ingrained.

“It’s clear from our findings that ultra-processed foods make up the majority of adolescents’ diets, and their consumption is at a much higher level than is ideal, given their potential negative health impacts.”

̽��ֱ��researchers argue that the observed reduction in UPF intake pre-pandemic could be partly explained by an increased public awareness and health concerns associated with sugar consumption, government-led campaigns, sugar-taxes in other countries and the reformulation of sugary drinks to reduce their sugar content.

Dr Esther van Sluijs from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge, joint senior author, said: “Ultra-processed foods offer convenient and often cheaper solutions to time- and income-poor families, but unfortunately many of these foods also offer poor nutritional value. This could be contributing to the inequalities in health we see emerging across childhood and adolescence.”

Dr Zoi Toumpakari from the Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences at the ̽��ֱ�� of Bristol, joint senior author, added: “Our findings suggest that disparities in consumption of ultra-processed foods are not just down to individual choices. We hope this evidence can help guide policymakers in designing more effective policies to combat the negative effects of ultra-processed food consumption among youth and the ripple effects this has on public health.”

This study was largely funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research School for Public Health Research.

Reference
Chavez-Ugalde, Y et al. Ultra-processed food consumption in UK adolescents: distribution, trends, and sociodemographic correlates using the National Diet and Nutrition Survey 2008/09 to 2018/19. Eur J Nutr; 17 Jul 2024; DOI: 10.1007/s00394-024-03458-z

Adolescents consume around two-thirds of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods (UPFs), new research from the Universities of Cambridge and Bristol has found.

Ultra-processed foods make up the majority of adolescents’ diets, and their consumption is at a much higher level than is ideal, given their potential negative health impacts

Yanaina Chavez-Ugalde

Juanmonino (Getty Images)

Boy eating a burger

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

New, nature-inspired concepts for turning CO2 into clean fuels

sc604 — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 16:16:16 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, have previously shown that biological catalysts, or enzymes, can produce fuels cleanly using renewable energy sources, but at low efficiency.

Their latest research has improved fuel production efficiency by 18 times in a laboratory setting, demonstrating that polluting carbon emissions can be turned into green fuels efficiently without any wasted energy. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in two related papers in Nature Chemistry and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Most methods for converting CO2 into fuel also produce unwanted by-products such as hydrogen. Scientists can alter the chemical conditions to minimise hydrogen production, but this also reduces the performance for CO2 conversion: so cleaner fuel can be produced, but at the cost of efficiency.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge-developed proof of concept relies on enzymes isolated from bacteria to power the chemical reactions which convert CO2 into fuel, a process called electrolysis. Enzymes are more efficient than other catalysts, such as gold, but they are highly sensitive to their local chemical environment. If the local environment isn’t exactly right, the enzymes fall apart and the chemical reactions are slow.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers, working with a team from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal, have developed a method to improve the efficiency of electrolysis by fine-tuning the solution conditions to alter the local environment of the enzymes.

“Enzymes have evolved over millions of years to be extremely efficient and selective, and they’re great for fuel-production because there aren’t any unwanted by-products,” said Dr Esther Edwardes Moore from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, first author of the PNAS paper. “However, enzyme sensitivity throws up a different set of challenges. Our method accounts for this sensitivity, so that the local environment is adjusted to match the enzyme’s ideal working conditions.”

̽��ֱ��researchers used computational methods to design a system to improve the electrolysis of CO2. Using the enzyme-based system, the level of fuel production increased by 18 times compared to the current benchmark solution.

To improve the local environment further, the team showed how two enzymes can work together, one producing fuel and the other controlling the environment. They found that by adding another enzyme, it sped up the reactions, both increasing efficiency and reducing unwanted by-products.

“We ended up with just the fuel we wanted, with no side-products and only marginal energy losses, producing clean fuels at maximum efficiency,” said Dr Sam Cobb, first author of the Nature Chemistry paper. “By taking our inspiration from biology, it will help us develop better synthetic catalyst systems, which is what we’ll need if we’re going to deploy CO2 electrolysis at a large scale.”

“Electrolysis has a big part to play in reducing carbon emissions,” said Professor Erwin Reisner, who led the research. “Instead of capturing and storing CO2, which is incredibly energy-intensive, we have demonstrated a new concept to capture carbon and make something useful from it in an energy-efficient way.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say that the secret to more efficient CO2 electrolysis lies in the catalysts. There have been big improvements in the development of synthetic catalysts in recent years, but they still fall short of the enzymes used in this work.

“Once you manage to make better catalysts, many of the problems with CO2 electrolysis just disappear,” said Cobb. “We’re showing the scientific community that once we can produce catalysts of the future, we’ll be able to do away with many of the compromises currently being made, since what we learn from enzymes can be transferred to synthetic catalysts.”

“Once we designed the concept, the improvement in performance was startling,” said Edwardes Moore. “I was worried we’d spend years trying to understand what was going on at the molecular level, but once we truly appreciated the influence of the local environment, it evolved really quickly.”

“In future we want to use what we have learned to tackle some challenging problems that the current state-of-the-art catalysts struggle with, such as using CO2 straight from air as these are conditions where the properties of enzymes as ideal catalysts can really shine,” said Cobb.

Erwin Reisner is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Sam Cobb is a Research Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. Esther Edwardes Moore completed her PhD with Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the European Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Reference:
Samuel J Cobb et al. ‘Fast CO2 hydration kinetics impair heterogeneous but improve enzymatic CO2 reduction catalysis.’ Nature Chemistry (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-021-00880-2

Esther Edwardes Moore et al. ‘Understanding the Local Chemical Environment of Bioelectrocatalysis.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2114097119

Researchers have developed an efficient concept to turn carbon dioxide into clean, sustainable fuels, without any unwanted by-products or waste.

Instead of capturing and storing CO2, which is incredibly energy-intensive, we have demonstrated a new concept to capture carbon and make something useful from it in an energy-efficient way

Erwin Reisner

Esther Edwardes Moore

Computer-generated image of enzyme

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes