- Author: Colin Bishop
Workers sort tomatoes at Russell Ranch
Part of our mission at the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis is to ensure access to healthy food. So we’ve focused much of our work on the intersection between agriculture and human nutrition.
An interesting new field of study in this area looks at flavonoids, which are compounds in fruits and vegetables thought to have beneficial antioxidant effects and other medicinal value – they may even help reduce cancer risk.
Measuring the amount of flavonoids is one way we can figure out just how...
- Author: Chris M. Webb
Catechins are phytochemical compounds found in plant-based foods and beverages. Consumption of catechins has been associated with a variety of beneficial effects including: ability of plasma to scavenge free radicals, blood vessel expansion, fat oxidation and more.
High concentrations of these helpful compounds can be found in many foods and beverages including: red wine, broad beans, black grapes, apricots, strawberries, apples, cherries, pears, raspberries, chocolate and both black and green tea.
To learn more about the benefits and research related to catechin rich foods, please see UC ANR’s free publication, Nutrition and Health Info Sheet...
- Author: Ann Senuta
I’m lucky enough to live about a mile from a small, family-run strawberry patch in Yolo County. From some time in April until October, the Laotian family members pick berries in the mornings and sell them from their small wooden stand until they run out of fruit for the day.
Flats of 4 or 6 baskets are the most economical to buy. I carefully place the flat on the floor of the passenger seat; by the time I have walked around to the driver’s seat, the fragrance of the fresh berries has filled the car with instant summer.
Once home, I don’t wash the berries unless I plan to eat them right away. Instead I keep the berries in their baskets and cardboard flat and just...
- Author: Ann King Filmer
There are a number of short (two-minute) NewsWatch segments on the UC Davis YouTube channel on various aspects of food. These timely and straightforward videos are easy to view and educational. Some food-related topics of interest include:
- Author: Diane Nelson
The ever popular pasta salad is sturdy and economical, but is it nutritious?
It sure can be, and research from UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences professor Jorge Dubcovsky is helping to make that so. Dubcovsky’s team discovered a gene in domesticated wheat that had been damaged, a gene that controls the distribution of nutrients to the grains in healthy grain plants. What’s more, they discovered a copy of that damaged gene in wild wheat, enabling them (and others) to breed new varieties with substantially increased levels of protein, iron and zinc.
Wheat provides about 20 percent of all the calories people consume worldwide. In other words, we eat a lot of...