The sugar content of twenty-four liquid medicines commonly prescribed for infants and young children were measured and the type of sugars present were also identified in four randomly selected samples. All the liquid medicines tested contained sugar, in the range of 29.4% to 61.2%. Sucrose appeared to be the most commonly used sugar. Whilst it is agreed that sucrose makes the medicine more acceptable to children, its continual use by the pharmaceutical industry should be discontinued due to its harmful effect on the dental health of children, particularly those taking these syrup-based medicines on prolonged basis. Sugar-free alternatives such as sorbitol or saccharin should be used instead.
This paper presents a comparison between data from single modality and fusion methods to classify Tualang honey as pure or adulterated using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) statistical classification approaches. Ten different brands of certified pure Tualang honey were obtained throughout peninsular Malaysia and Sumatera, Indonesia. Various concentrations of two types of sugar solution (beet and cane sugar) were used in this investigation to create honey samples of 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% adulteration concentrations. Honey data extracted from an electronic nose (e-nose) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) were gathered, analyzed and compared based on fusion methods. Visual observation of classification plots revealed that the PCA approach able to distinct pure and adulterated honey samples better than the LDA technique. Overall, the validated classification results based on FTIR data (88.0%) gave higher classification accuracy than e-nose data (76.5%) using the LDA technique. Honey classification based on normalized low-level and intermediate-level FTIR and e-nose fusion data scored classification accuracies of 92.2% and 88.7%, respectively using the Stepwise LDA method. The results suggested that pure and adulterated honey samples were better classified using FTIR and e-nose fusion data than single modality data.
Diet and sugar eating habits, in particular sweet preference levels, are gradually nurtured over time by culturally accepted dietary norms. The dietary habits of Malaysia's three main ethnic groups are distinctively different from each other and expectedly, many studies have discovered significant ethnic variations in caries experience. In order to guide further research work into the causes of these variations, this pilot study was designed to establish whether ethnic variations exist in sweet preference levels. This study found that although the difference in sweet preference between boys and girls in this sample was not statistically significant, the ethnic variation was statistically significant. The implications of this study and suggestions for further research in this field are discussed.
During the production of palm sugar, the palm sap (Arenga pinnata) is heated up to 150 degrees C. Besides the hydrolysis of carbohydrate to generate reducing sugars and degradation of amino acid, many physicochemical changes produced at all these temperatures, having a significant impact on the overall quality of palm sugar. In this study, changes in physico-chemical properties of the palm sap due to heat processing were investigated. Analysis of colour, soluble solid, pH, temperature, sugar and amino acid concentration was determinant. The results showed clearly that the heating process at these high temperatures was necessary to create an environment which was rich in essential precursors for subsequent reactions such as Maillard reaction. Chemical compounds that showed drastic changes in concentration were polar side chain amino acids especially glutamine, asparagine and arginine as well as sucrose and pH value. Other quality characteristics of palm sugar based on colour and soluble solids (Brix) shared an increase in concentration as a function of time.
The levels of sugars, ascorbic acid, total phenolic content (TPC) and total antioxidant activity (TAA) were determined in fruit juices from seven passion fruit (Passiflora spp.) cultivars: P. edulis cultivars Purple, Frederick, Yellow, Pink, P. edulis f. flavicarpa, P. maliformis and P. quadrangularis (we also tested this cultivar's mesocarp).
Andrographis paniculata (Burm. F.) Nees. is considered as the herb of the future due to its precious chemical compounds, andrographolide (ANDRO), neoandrographolide (NAG) and 14-deoxyandrographolide (DAG). This study aims to profile the metabolites in young and mature leaf at six different harvest ages using 1HNMR-based metabolomics combined with multivariate data analysis. Principal component analysis (PCA) indicated noticeable and clear discrimination between young and mature leaves. A comparison of the leaves stage indicated that young leaves were separated from mature leaves due to its larger quantity of ANDRO, NAG, DAG, glucose and sucrose. These similar metabolites are also responsible for the PCA separation into five clusters representing the harvest age at 14, 16, 18, 20, 22 weeks of leaves extract. Loading plots revealed that most of the ANDRO and NAG signals were present when the plant reached at the pre-flowering stage or 18 weeks after sowing (WAS). As a conclusion, A. paniculata young leaves at pre-flowering harvest age were found to be richer in ANDRO, NAG and DAG compared to mature leaves while glucose and choline increased with harvest age. Therefore, young leaves of A. paniculata should be harvested at 18 WAS in order to produce superior quality plant extracts for further applications by the herbal, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries.
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the physicochemical and antioxidant properties of Malaysian monofloral honey samples-acacia, pineapple and borneo honey-and compare them with tualang honey. Acacia and pineapple honey are produced by Apis mellifera bees while borneo and tualang honey are produced by Apis cerana and Apis dorsata bees, respectively.