Issues and challenges in defeating world hunger

Mapping of Female Breast Cancer Incidence and Mortality Rates to Socioeconomic Factors Cohort: Path Diagram Analysis

OBJECTIVES

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women around the world. Its occurrence and development have been linked to genetic factors, living habits, health conditions, and socioeconomic factors. Comparisons of incidence and mortality rates of female breast cancer are useful approaches to define cancer-related socioeconomic disparities.

METHODS

This was a retrospective observational cohort study on breast cancer of women in several developed countries over 30 years. Effects of socioeconomic factors were analyzed using a path diagram method.

RESULTS

We found a positive, significant association of public wealth on incidence and mortality of breast cancer, and the path coefficients in the structural equations are -0.51 and -0.39, respectively. The unemployment rate (UR) is critical and the path coefficients are all 0.2. The path coefficients of individual economic wealth to the rates of breast cancer are 0.18 and 0.27, respectively.

CONCLUSION

The influence of social pressure on the incidence and mortality of breast cancer was not typical monotonous. The survival rate of breast cancer determined by the ratio of mortality rate to incidence rate showed a similar pattern with socioeconomic factors.

Chemical and nutritional composition of some selected lesser known legumes indigenous to Nigeria

This study evaluated the nutritional composition of Nigeria's lesser known legumes namely African breadfruit (Treculia africana), African yam bean (Sphenostylis stenocarpa) seed, bambaranut (Vigna subterranean L.), red bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), groundnut (Arachis hypogea L.), African oil bean (Pentaclethra mycrophylla Benth.) seed, cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp) and pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan). The proximate composition, mineral content, fibre profile, fatty acid profile and amino acid compositions were evaluated using standard methods. The results showed that legume samples vary significantly (p < 0.05) in the chemical parameters evaluated. Groundnut, African oil bean seed and African breadfruit had significantly higher protein, carbohydrate, fat and ash contents than other legumes. Equally, groundnut, African oil bean and African breadfruit showed superiority in mineral and fibre abundance, while bambaranut had the lowest mineral and fibre contents. Linolenic acid is the most abundant fatty acid in all the legumes with values ranging from 38.78 - 84.57%. The percentage polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) for all the samples ranged from 40.15 - 48.97%. The total essential amino acids ranged from 24.11 - 66.67 mg/100 g. The range is considered adequate for ideal protein food. Therefore, lesser legumes evaluated can serve as alternative protein sources with good minerals, fibre, essential fatty and amino acids contents.

Global hunger: a challenge to agricultural, food, and nutritional sciences

Hunger has been a concern for generations and has continued to plague hundreds of millions of people around the world. Although many efforts have been devoted to reduce hunger, challenges such as growing competitions for natural resources, emerging climate changes and natural disasters, poverty, illiteracy, and diseases are posing threats to food security and intensifying the hunger crisis. Concerted efforts of scientists to improve agricultural and food productivity, technology, nutrition, and education are imperative to facilitate appropriate strategies for defeating hunger and malnutrition. This paper provides some aspects of world hunger issues and summarizes the efforts and measures aimed to alleviate food problems from the food and nutritional sciences perspectives. The prospects and constraints of some implemented strategies for alleviating hunger and achieving sustainable food security are also discussed. This comprehensive information source could provide insights into the development of a complementary framework for dealing with the global hunger issue.

New foods for thought

Recent findings show that genetic material in plant foods may survive digestion, circulate through our bodies and modulate our gene expression. These findings could alter our understanding of nutrition, genetic regulation and open up new vistas for engineering foods.