The World’s Hottest Pepper is Created in South Carolina Read

The world’s hottest pepper resembles an inappropriate scorpion tail. The surface is crinkled and oily with a loud red color, its seeds rate an average of 1,569,300 Scoville Heat Units — beating out the previous titleholder, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, by more than 300,000 units.

Tested by Winthrop University throughout 2012, the Carolina Reaper grown by Ed Currie of PuckerButt Pepper Co. in South Carolina earned itself a place in the Guinness Book of World Records last month. The Associated Press reports that the record is for the hottest batch of Currie’s peppers tested, filed as HP22B, or “Higher Power, Pot No. 22, Plant B.” The hottest individual Carolina Reaper of the lot weighed in at 2.2 million Scoville Heat Units.

To put things in perspective, a jalapeño pepper has rating of 5,000 on the Scoville scale; ghost peppers clock in at 1 million and pepper spray at 2 million Scoville Units. At more than 1.5 million units, the Carolina Reaper should come with a mini fire extinguisher. Just in case

Read more at http://foodbeast.com/2013/12/27/the-worlds-hottest-pepper-is-grown-in-south-carolina/#Rc0eJcAqFOlU7xjQ.99

You Are What Your Father Eats!

The research focused on vitamin B9, also called folate, which is found in a range of green leafy vegetables, cereals, fruit and meats. It is well known that in order to prevent miscarriages and birth defects mothers need to get adequate amounts of folate in their diet. But the way that a father's diet can influence the health and development of their offspring has received almost no attention. Now research from the Kimmins group shows for the first time that the father's folate levels may be just as important to the development and health of their offspring as are those of the mother. Indeed, the study suggests that fathers should pay as much attention to their lifestyle and diet before they set out to conceive a child as mothers do.

"Despite the fact that folic acid is now added to a variety of foods, fathers who are eating high-fat, fast food diets or who are obese may not be able to use or metabolize folate in the same way as those with adequate levels of the vitamin," says Kimmins. "People who live in the Canadian North or in other parts of the world where there is food insecurity may also be particularly at risk for folate deficiency. And we now know that this information will be passed on from the father to the embryo with consequences that may be quite serious."

The researchers arrived at this conclusion by working with mice, and comparing the offspring of fathers with insufficient folate in their diets with the offspring of fathers whose diets contained sufficient levels of the vitamin. They found that paternal folate deficiency was associated with an increase in birth defects of various kinds in the offspring, compared to the offspring of mice whose fathers were fed a diet with sufficient folate.

"We were very surprised to see that there was an almost 30 per cent increase in birth defects in the litters sired by fathers whose levels of folates were insufficient," said Dr. Romain Lambrot, of McGill's Dept. of Animal Science, one of the researchers who worked on the study. "We saw some pretty severe skeletal abnormalities that included both cranio-facial and spinal deformities."

The research from the Kimmins' group shows that there are regions of the sperm epigenome that are sensitive to life experience and particularly to diet. And that this information is in turn transferred to a so-called epigenomic map that influences development and may also influence metabolism and disease in the offspring in the long-term. (The epigenome is like a switch, which is affected by environmental cues, and is involved in many diseases including cancer and diabetes. The epigenome influences the way that genes are turned on or off, and hence how heritable information gets passed along).

Although it has been known for some time that there is a massive erasure and re-establishment that takes place in the epigenome as the sperm develops, this study now shows that along with the developmental map, the sperm also carries a memory of the father's environment and possibly even of his diet and lifestyle choices.

"Our research suggests that fathers need to think about what they put in their mouths, what they smoke and what they drink and remember they are caretakers of generations to come," said Kimmins. "If all goes as we hope, our next step will be to work with collaborators at a fertility clinic so that we can start assessing the links in men between diet, being overweight and how this information relates to the health of their children."

Does Obesity Reshape Our Sense of Taste?

In a Nov. 13 study in the journal PLOS ONE, University at Buffalo biologists report that being severely overweight impaired the ability of mice to detect sweets.

Compared with slimmer counterparts, the plump mice had fewer taste cells that responded to sweet stimuli. What's more, the cells that did respond to sweetness reacted relatively weakly.

The findings peel back a new layer of the mystery of how obesity alters our relationship to food.

"Studies have shown that obesity can lead to alterations in the brain, as well as the nerves that control the peripheral taste system, but no one had ever looked at the cells on the tongue that make contact with food," said lead scientist Kathryn Medler, PhD, UB associate professor of biological sciences.

"What we see is that even at this level -- at the first step in the taste pathway -- the taste receptor cells themselves are affected by obesity," Medler said. "The obese mice have fewer taste cells that respond to sweet stimuli, and they don't respond as well."

The research matters because taste plays an important role in regulating appetite: what we eat, and how much we consume.

How an inability to detect sweetness might encourage weight gain is unclear, but past research has shown that obese people yearn for sweet and savory foods though they may not taste these flavors as well as thinner people.

Medler said it's possible that trouble detecting sweetness may lead obese mice to eat more than their leaner counterparts to get the same payoff.

Learning more about the connection between taste, appetite and obesity is important, she said, because it could lead to new methods for encouraging healthy eating.

"If we understand how these taste cells are affected and how we can get these cells back to normal, it could lead to new treatments," Medler said. "These cells are out on your tongue and are more accessible than cells in other parts of your body, like your brain."

The new PLOS ONE study compared 25 normal mice to 25 of their littermates who were fed a high-fat diet and became obese.

To measure the animals' response to different tastes, the research team looked at a process called calcium signaling. When cells "recognize" a certain taste, there is a temporary increase in the calcium levels inside the cells, and the scientists measured this change.

The results: Taste cells from the obese mice responded more weakly not only to sweetness but, surprisingly, to bitterness as well. Taste cells from both groups of animals reacted similarly to umami, a flavor associated with savory and meaty foods.

Medler's co-authors on the study were former UB graduate student Amanda Maliphol and former UB undergraduate Deborah Garth.

Garlic Can Help In Baby Formula

The study, recently published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, is the first to identify two compounds derived from garlic -- diallyl sulfide and ajoene -- that significantly reduce the contamination risk of Cronobacter sakazakii in the production of dry infant formula powder.

The discovery could make the product safer to consume, easing the minds of new mothers who can't or opt not to breastfeed.

"A trace dose of these two compounds is extremely effective in killing C. sakazakii in the food manufacturing process," says Xiaonan Lu, corresponding author and assistant professor of food safety engineering in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. "They have the potential to eliminate the pathogen before it ever reaches the consumer."

C. sakazakii is a foodborne pathogen that is sometimes present in dry infant formula powder and other fortified foods. C. sakazakii infection is rare, but often fatal for infants. It can poison a baby's bloodstream and lead to life-threatening cases of meningitis. Outbreaks of C. sakazakii have occurred worldwide.

According to Lu, the garlic compounds could be used to prevent C. sakazakii contamination on food contact surfaces and in every step of food production -- from processing, packaging and delivery.

"Pipes used in the manufacturing of milk products are typically cleaned with chemicals like chlorine, but these garlic compounds are a natural alternative," says Lu. "We believe these compounds are more beneficial in protecting babies against this pathogen."