Refining Ounce-Equivalents Using the EAA-9 Approach for Protein Scoring and Dietary Guidance.

Background: The USDA Protein Food Ounce-equivalents are designed to identify plant sources of protein foods and provide serving size substitutions. While the ounce-equivalent concept is simple, it fails to generate equivalent exchanges for protein or essential amino acids (EAAs).

Objective: To accurately define the EAA content of USDA protein food ounce-equivalents, to develop a more accurate food exchange list, and to evaluate the EAA-9 protein quality framework as a tool for determining precise EAA-equivalent substitutions.

Visualizing Data Interoperability for Food Systems Sustainability Research-From Spider Webs to Neural Networks.

Food systems represent all elements and activities needed to feed the growing global population. Research on sustainable food systems is transdisciplinary, relying on the interconnected domains of health, nutrition, economics, society, and environment. The current lack of interoperability across databases poses a challenge to advancing research on food systems transformation.

Perspective: Developing a Nutrient-Based Framework for Protein Quality.

The future of precision nutrition requires treating amino acids as essential nutrients. Currently, recognition of essential amino acid requirements is embedded within a generalized measure of protein quality known as the PDCAAS (Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score). Calculating the PDCAAS includes the FAO/WHO/UNU amino acid score, which is based on the limiting amino acid in a food, that is, the single amino acid with the lowest concentration compared to the reference standard.

Establishing a Common Nutritional Vocabulary - From Food Production to Diet.

Informed policy and decision-making for food systems, nutritional security, and global health would benefit from standardization and comparison of food composition data, spanning production to consumption. To address this challenge, we present a formal controlled vocabulary of terms, definitions, and relationships within the Compositional Dietary Nutrition Ontology (CDNO, www.cdno.

A Clear Difference Emerges in Hormone Patterns Following a Standard Midday Meal in Young Women Who Regularly Eat or Skip Breakfast.

Background: Multiple hormones are involved in the regulation of food intake and glucose metabolism. Past intervention studies showed a benefit of eating breakfast on satiety, but this was possibly confounded by the disruption of habitual meal patterns.

Objective: The objective of this study was to compare hormonal responses, including insulin, leptin, glucagon-like peptide-1, ghrelin, peptide YY (PYY3-36), and cholecystokinin (CCK), between habitual breakfast eaters (Br-Es) and habitual skippers (Br-Ss) to a standard midday meal.

Chronic Stress Is Associated with Indicators of Diet Quality in Habitual Breakfast Skippers.

Background: Previous studies suggest skipping breakfast is associated with lower diet quality, but possible reasons underlying this relationship are not clear.

Objective: Our aim was to determine the relationship between chronic stress and variations in diet quality in the context of breakfast eating or breakfast skipping.

Design: Based on morning eating habits, 40 breakfast eaters and 35 breakfast skippers participated in a cross-sectional study.

Vegetable variety is a key to improved diet quality in low-income women in California.

Primary prevention education interventions, including those sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture for low-income families, encourage and support increases in vegetable intake. Promoting vegetable variety as a focal point for behavior change may be a useful strategy to increase vegetable consumption. A simple vegetable variety evaluation tool might be useful to replace the time-intensive 24-hour dietary recall.