Asma Souissi et al., 'Impact of food consumption on water footprint and food security in Tunisia', Food Security, vol. 11(5), pp.989-1008, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2019

The United Nations Food Systems Summit aimed to chart a path toward transforming food systems toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the essentiality of water for food systems, however, the Summit has not sufficiently considered the role of water for food systems transformation. This focus is even more important due to rapidly worsening climate change and its pervasive impacts on food systems that are mediated through water. To avoid that water "breaks" food systems, key food systems actors should 1) Strengthen efforts to retain water-dependent ecosystems, their functions and services; 2) Improve agricultural water management; 3) Reduce water and food losses beyond the farmgate; 4) Coordinate water with nutrition and health interventions; 5) Increase the environmental sustainability of food systems; 6) Explicitly address social inequities; and 7) Improve data quality and monitoring for water-food system linkages.

The observed and predicted changes in climate, as well as the growth in urban population, are creating severe stress on existing water resources in South Korea. By the importation of agricultural products from more water-rich countries through the virtual water concept, a country could save local water resources for other important uses. However, these imports from other countries could lead to certain vulnerabilities in the importing country derived from climate change. Therefore, through the application of the virtual water concept and the climate vulnerability index ((CVI) - measure of a country's vulnerability to indirect climate impacts), this study assessed the implication of virtual water imports and climate change through food trade, on the water, land and food security status of South Korea over the period of 2000–2017. The results showed that significant amounts of national water and land was saved through the importation of major upland crops. Virtual water imports increased significantly over time, rising from 16.2 Bm3 in 2000 to 16.5, 17.4, and 20.7 Bm3 in 2005, 2011, and 2017 respectively, with the USA, China, Australia, Brazil and Canada being the major exporters to South Korea. The study also revealed high CVI values for the oils and grains category of imported food, implying the high vulnerability of South Korea to climate change effects resulting from the import of these crops. The quantitative impacts and structural changes in virtual water trade, as well as the link between climate change, food security, international trade, and domestic water consumption could be evaluated for the sustainable management and allocation of resources. This study successfully identified and quantified the status of food trade and its environmental implications in the study area, providing insight into a better allocation of locally available resources.

Water activity has historically been and continues to be recognised as a key concept in the area of food science. Despite its ubiquitous utilisation, it still appears as though there is confusion concerning its molecular basis, even within simple, single component solutions. Here, by close examination of the well-known Norrish equation and subsequent application of a rigorous statistical theory, we are able to shed light on such an origin. Our findings highlight the importance of solute-solute interactions thus questioning traditional, empirically based “free water” and “water structure” hypotheses. Conversely, they support the theory of “solute hydration and clustering” which advocates the interplay of solute-solute and solute-water interactions but crucially, they do so in a manner which is free of any estimations and approximations.

Correct identifications are the key to all data on an organism. Fungi cultured or sequenced from a foodstuff may not always be the spoilage agents, and there are potential pit-falls in culturing and molecular identification. Molecular phylogenetics is resulting in major changes in fungal classification, and substantial changes in the rules on naming fungi were agreed in 2011. Different morphs of a single pleomorphic species can no longer have different scientific names, and stability is to be fostered through lists of protected names. The naming of fungi is becoming increasingly fit-for-purpose by taking advantage of the possibilities arising from advances in molecular and digital technologies. A list of the current names of 100 species of spoilage fungi is included.

Composite health measures are increasingly applied in studies aiming at describing the burden of diseases, and food and water-borne diseases (FWDs) are no exception. The Burden of Communicable Diseases in Europe (BCoDE) is a project led and funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) with the purpose of encouraging and empowering public health experts in the estimation of the impact of communicable diseases expressed in Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). Calculation of DALYs and a critical assessment of burden of disease outputs require a thorough consideration of a number of methodological and epidemiological decisions ranging from modelling (e.g. incidence versus prevalence), disease model parameters (e.g. risks of developing complications or death) and the data feeding the number of cases.Burden of disease studies produce useful results for public health decision-making, in particular when they aim at informing preventive strategies. For this purpose, we attributed FWDs results from the BCoDE 2015 study to different exposure routes. We discuss these in the more general perspective of generating burden of disease evidence for planning and prioritisation, including the potentials and limitations of its methodology.

peer reviewed | Partial coalescence influences to a great extent the properties of final food products such as ice cream and whipped toppings. In return, the partial coalescence occurrence and development are conditioned, in such systems, by the emulsion's intrinsic properties (e.g. solid fat content, fat crystal shape and size), formulation (e.g. protein content, surfactants presence) and extrinsic factors (e.g. cooling rate, shearing). A set of methods is available for partial coalescence investigation and quantification. These methods are critically reviewed in this paper, balancing the weaknesses of themethods in terms of structure alteration (for turbidity, dye dilution, etc.) and assumptions made for mathematical models (for particle size determination) with their advantages (good repeatability, high sensitivity, etc.).With the methods proposed in literature, the partial coalescence investigations can be conducted quantitatively and/or qualitatively. Good correlation were observed between some of the quantitative methods such as dye dilution, calorimetry, fat particle size;while a poor correlation was found in the case of solvent extraction method with other quantitativemethods. The most suitableway for partial coalescence quantification was implied to be the fat particle size method, which would give results with a high degree of confidence if used in combination with a microscopic technique for the confirmation of partial coalescence as the main destabilization mechanism.

Differences in recognition of physical properties of food in food science and engineering and the influence of water on them were discussed. The physical properties, 'Bussei' in Japanese, can be usually defined in food engineering and physics as 'the physical quantities that characterize a substance and do not depend on the shape and size of the material'. There seem, however, to be other interpretations of the physical properties among food researchers and technologists. For example, some researchers such as food chemists and cooking scientists refer to the dynamic properties and the texture of foods as the 'Bussei', whereas others such as technologists in food companies refer to it as the physical characteristics of foods reflecting some physical phenomena in food manufacturing and preservation processes. Most of the latter two types of 'Bussei' are influenced by the size and shape of materials and are not, therefore, the true physical properties. The type of 'Bussei' useful for food researchers and engineers would, however, vary depending on the situation or problem to be solved. Physical properties of foods are used for several purposes: first, they are indispensable parameters in the engineering models for predicting the optimal conditions for food manufacturing; second, the inner structure or state of food materials can be estimated from the behaviors of some of their physical properties. For example, water interacts with many food components; and thus the amount and/or state of water considerably influences the physical properties of foods, for example, by causing a change in the dynamic properties during sol-gel transition and the glass-rubber transition by the plasticizing effect of water.

Nowadays people demand for healthy, convenient, and wholesome foods. Double emulsions have attracted widespread attention in the food industry owing to their capability of encapsulating the compounds, fabricating polymersomes, and acting as fat replacers or sweetness enhancers in different foods. In this review, properties and their importance in the fabrication of double emulsions along with their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. In the lateral part of the manuscript, the instability mechanism and the effect of different variables on the stability of the double emulsions are reviewed. Finally, this review provides a glimpse of the recent food application of W/O/W double emulsions. Double emulsions have a better profile on the encapsulation of nutrients along with maintenance of the organoleptic quality of the food. The conventional emulsification techniques result in low encapsulation efficiency and poor monodispersity. With recent developments, different novel methods for the fabrication of double-emulsions have been developed such as glass capillary microfluidic devices, membrane emulsification, phase inversion techniques, etc. However, findings thus far indicate that the long-term stability of double emulsions remains a crucial issue that limits their wide application in food formulations. Therefore, further research should focus on finding innovative approaches to improve the stability of double emulsions.

Legumes, which include a great variety of seeds, are distinguished by their protein content. Legume seeds produce defensive compounds against fungi and insect predators, and these compounds can be extracted or isolated for antimicrobial use. Isolation and identification of legume proteins and peptides have been extensively studied as part of the search for antifungal compounds. Researchers have recently started to pay attention to the antimicrobial activities of legume proteins, lectins, and peptides; however, few overviews regarding their antifungal activity are available, particularly concerning food applications.This review summarizes the main legume proteins and peptides with antifungal activity and their principal antifungal mechanisms of action. Further, potential food applications of legume water extracts and legume crude protein extracts with antifungal activity are discussed.Most studies have focused on isolating and identifying proteins and peptides with antifungal activity. Antifungal mechanism of action has been established for legume defensins. In contrast, legume water extracts and legume crude protein extracts have been subjected to less investigation; however, these preparations have been explored for food applications, particularly in bread, with interesting results. Despite their antifungal activity, practical applications of legume proteins and peptides have yet to be found. This is due to their low yields, high costs, and poor safety regulatory status. Therefore, further research on legume water extracts is necessary before food applications can be broadly developed.