The French OQALI survey on dairy products: comparison of nutrient contents and other nutrition information on labels among types of brands.

BACKGROUND: Depending on their spending power, consumers may choose foodstuffs from more or less expensive types of brands (national, retailer, economy-line retailer or discount brands). The present study, on dairy products, assesses the nutritional composition and the frequencies of labelled nutrition parameters, according to types of brands. METHODS: The 1646 most consumed dairy products were collected. Nutrient contents and other labelled nutrition parameters provided on the packaging (i.e. nutrition and health claims, nutrition guidelines such as guideline daily amounts, consumption advice and information on added vitamins and minerals) were captured in the French branded product composition database (OQALI). RESULTS: Significant differences between brands were found for energy, protein, fat, saturates, carbohydrate, sugars, dietary fibre, calcium and sodium, in four of six dairy groups studied, but not systematically. National brands and retailer brands provided more detailed nutrition labelling and more frequent nutrition claims than cheaper brands. More retailer brand products provided nutrition guidelines and consumption advice than the other branded products. National brand products more frequently contained added vitamins and minerals and more frequently bore health claims. CONCLUSIONS: Nutrient contents of the cheaper brands of dairy products did not vary systematically from more expensive ones. However, national brands and retailer brands products provided more nutrition information on labels than the cheaper ones. There should be more detailed studies comparing different types of brands regarding labelling practices for nutrient contents and other nutrition information about foodstuffs to help prepare public health recommendations, adapted to all consumers, regardless of their income.

Nutritional quality and labelling of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals: the contribution of the French observatory of food quality.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: To assess developments in the nutritional quality of food products in various food groups in France, an Observatory of Food Quality (Oqali) was created in 2008. To achieve its aims, Oqali built up a new database to describe each specific food item at the most detailed level, and also included economic parameters (market share and mean prices). The objective of this paper is to give a detailed analysis of the monitoring of the ready-to-eat breakfast cereals (RTEBCs) sector in order to show the benefits of the Oqali database. SUBJECTS/METHODS: Analysis was limited to products with nutritional information on labels. Packaging was provided by manufacturers or retailers, or obtained by buying products in regular stores. Economic parameters were obtained from surveys on French food consumption and data from consumer purchase panels. The breakfast cereal sector was divided into 10 categories and 5 types of brand. Oqali has developed anonymous indicators to describe product characteristics for each category of RTEBC and each type of brand by cross-referencing nutritional values with economic data. Packaging-related data were also analysed. The major nutritional parameters studied were energy, protein, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars, fibre and sodium. Analysis was performed on the basis of descriptive statistics, multivariate statistics and a Kruskal-Wallis test. RESULTS: For the RTEBC, there is large variability in nutrient content throughout the sector, both within and between product categories. There is no systematic relation between brand type and nutritional quality within each product category, and the proportion of brand type within each product category is different. Nutritional labels, claims and pictograms are widespread on packages but vary according to the type of brand. CONCLUSIONS: These findings form the basis for monitoring developments in the nutritional composition and packaging-related data for breakfast cereals in the future. The final objective is to expand the approach illustrated here to all food sectors progressively.

Phenolic composition of grape stems.

Grape stems contain significant amounts of polyphenolic compounds, especially phenolic acids, flavonols, and flavanonols such as astilbin. The tannin content was characterized after the depolymerization reaction thiolysis. Tannins consisted of polymeric proanthocyanidins (up to 27 units) mainly consisting of (-)-epicatechin units along with smaller amounts of (+)-catechin, (-)-epicatechin gallate, and (-)-epigallocatechin. Flavanonols (astilbin) have been identified for the first time in stem and characterized by LC/MS and NMR. All phenolic compounds in grape stems were quantified by HPLC: quercetin 3-glucuronide was the most important, followed by catechin, caffeoyltartaric acid, and dihydroquercetin 3-rhamnoside (astilbin). Comparison was made of proanthocyanidin characteristics in different white and red grape varieties and also among parts of the cluster (skin, seed, and stem). Stem-condensed tannins were qualitatively intermediate between seed and skin but could not be differentiated between red and white varieties.

Quantitative fractionation of grape proanthocyanidins according to their degree of polymerization.

A method was developed for the fractionation of grape (seed or skin) proanthocyanidins according to their degree of polymerization. After precipitation in chloroform/methanol (75:25, v/v), the grape proanthocyanidins were deposited onto an inert glass powder column and sequentially dissolved in several fractions by increasing proportions of methanol in the solvent. Each fraction from each proanthocyanidin source was quantified and characterized after acidic degradation with phenylmethanethiol (i.e., thiolysis). The comparison of data from total extract and successive fractions showed that a quantitative separation was achieved so that estimation of polymer size distribution in relation to other compositional characteristics (proportions of prodelphinidin units, galloylation rate) was thus possible. Mean degree of polymerization of separated proanthocyanidins ranged increasingly from 4.7 to 17.4 in seed (8.1 for total extract) and from 9.3 to 73.8 in skin (34.9 for total extract). The method proposed is very interesting for the study of grape proanthocyanidins according to their degree of polymerization because it gives both qualitative and quantitative information especially on the highly polymerized forms, which were not fractionated by previous techniques.