"davis" news and stories

Researchers at UC-Davis have found that cut fruit left in the refrigerator doesn't lose nearly as much of its nutritional value as they thought, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Over a nine-day period, six different types of cut, refrigerated fruit were compared to uncut, refrigerated samples and tested for amounts of vitamin C, carotenoids and phenolics. Sliced watermelon only lost 5 percent less C than whole watermelon and it retained the same amount of lycopene, the CS-T reported. One conclusion reached was that visual appeal and taste fade well before nutritional value does.

With the marketing of "low-carb" potatoes, it's no surprise that scientists are now working on low-calorie fruit. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, are working on producing apples with higher levels of sorbitol and lower levels of sucrose and fructose. Sorbitol apparently has nearly half the calories of sucrose and fructose, all of which occur naturally in fruit. Fruits like apples aren't particularly high in calories to begin with, so I'm a bit curious as to what the other goals of this research are.

Source

A team of scientists from the U.S. and Germany have pinned down one of the chemicals responsible for chocolate's positive effects on the heart. While it's been known for some time that a group of chemicals called flavanols--found in tea, wine and cocoa--are good for the vascular system, these recent findings identify a specific chemical, epicatechin, as linked to improved circulation and heart health. Scientists from University of California, Davis, Harvard Medical School and the Heinrich-Heine University of Duesseldorf, Germany published the results of their study in the January 17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The abstract is available here.

One part of the study observed the Kuna Indians, who live on the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama. The Kuna consume several cups of flavanol-rich cocoa every day and enjoy low levels of heart disease. Scientists who observed Kuna who live on the mainland and drink far less cocoa noted that they had poorer cardiovascular health. A UC Davis release explains.