Detecting iodine deficiency risks from dietary transitions using shopping data.

Plant-based product replacements are gaining popularity. However, the long-term health implications remain poorly understood, and available methods, though accurate, are expensive and burdensome, impeding the study of sufficiently large cohorts. To identify dietary transitions over time, we examine anonymised loyalty-card shopping records from Co-op Food, UK. We focus on 10,626 frequent customers who directly replaced milk with alternative milk. We then use product nutritional information to estimate weekly nutrient intake before and after the transition. 83% who converted to alternative milk saw a fall in iodine (44%), calcium (30%) and vitamin B12 (39%) consumption, with 57% reducing iodine purchase by more than 50%. The decline is even higher for those switching dairy and meat products. Our findings suggest that dietary transitions - such as replacing milk with alternative milk - could lead to nutritional deficiencies, notably iodine, which, if not addressed, may represent a significant public health concern, particularly in countries which do not mandate salt iodisation.

Gene Pool Subdivision of East African Sweetpotato Parental Material.

Sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam] breeding is important for food security and health in East Africa (EA), and a breeding platform in Uganda provides national researchers and breeders in EA with true seed. Our objectives were to characterize genetic relationships among parental material used at the EA breeding platform. There were 135 parents and six check clones analyzed using 31 simple sequence repeat primers. An average of 7.13 alleles per primer was found, and Jaccard similarity coefficients were in the range of 0.298 to 1.00 with a mean of 0.542. Unweighted pair group cluster analysis placed most African parents in two main subclusters showing no association with morphology or geographical origin. The subclusters were also supported by principal coordinate analysis, derivative analysis of principal components, and population structure simulations. The analyzed breeding material from EA was highly genetically variable, grouped in two distinct genetic pools, and suitable to study heterosis exploiting breeding schemes.