The nutritional and physiological impact of cereal products in human nutrition

Could schizophrenia be reasonably explained by Dohan's hypothesis on genetic interaction with a dietary peptide overload?

1. Dohan has proposed that schizophrenia is a genetic disposition which interacts with an overload of dietary proteins such as casein and gluten or gliadin. 2. A systematic attempt is made to see if this hypothesis is possible faced with aspects of schizophrenia that must be accounted for. 3. The authors conclusion is that it is possible, but more serious work in this field is urgently needed.

Cereal sprouts: composition, nutritive value, food applications

The practice of sprouting of cereal grains has become popular in the western world. Sprouted grains are thought of as having exceptional nutritive value. Sprouting is easy and can be done without sophisticated equipment. Untreated seeds of good quality and high germination percentage are placed in an environment of adequate water, a desirable temperature, and a certain composition of gases in the atmosphere for several days for sprouting. The sprouts can be kept for a few days to over a week under refrigeration. They can be used in many different foods including breakfast items, salads, soups, casseroles, pasta, and baked products. Sprouting of grains causes increased enzyme activity, a loss of total dry matter, an increase in total protein, a change in amino acid composition, a decrease in starch, increases in sugars, a slight increase in crude fat and crude fiber, and slightly higher amounts of certain vitamins and minerals. Most of the increases in nutrients are not true increases, however. They simply reflect the loss of dry matter, mainly in the form of carbohydrates, due to respiration during sprouting. As total carbohydrates decreases, the percentage of other nutrients increases. There are no nutritional evaluations of cereal sprouts in humans. Animal studies with cattle, pigs, chickens, and rats have failed to show a superior nutritive value of sprouted grains over ungerminated grains. Studies with humans are not likely to produce more encouraging results.

Control through breeding methods of factors affecting nutritional quality of cereals and grain legumes

The comparison of nutritional quality parameters of proteins from cultivated cereal and legume species with animal proteins indicate the poor nutritional value of these plant products. The nutritive value of different cereal and legume species is very variable and large differences have also been observed coming from cultivars belonging to the same species. Many interpreting factors, such as protein content, essential amino acid composition and availability, protein digestibility and others are involved in such a highly variability. In addition, cereals as well as legumes may contain large amounts of antinutritional factors which can have serious effects under particular circumstances (e.e. tannins in a low-protein diet or phytates in a metal-deficient diet). Some legume species also contain chemicals of a different nature (i. e. lathyrogens, cyanogenetic glycosides, and others) which may be extremely toxic when ingested in significant amounts. The plant breeder attempting to develop higher-yielding, disease-resistant and nutritionally-improved crop varieties should be aware of such a complex of factors and alert to the possible production or increase of undesirable products or deleterious changes in chemical composition. Available data, although rather limited, indicate valuable breeding approaches to the improvement of nutritive value of cereal and legume grains for humans.