Explore the vast range of titles available.

The present commentary contains a clear and simple guide designed to identify ultra-processed foods. It responds to the growing interest in ultra-processed foods among policy makers, academic researchers, health professionals, journalists and consumers concerned to devise policies, investigate dietary patterns, advise people, prepare media coverage, and when buying food and checking labels in shops or at home. Ultra-processed foods are defined within the NOVA classification system, which groups foods according to the extent and purpose of industrial processing. Processes enabling the manufacture of ultra-processed foods include the fractioning of whole foods into substances, chemical modifications of these substances, assembly of unmodified and modified food substances, frequent use of cosmetic additives and sophisticated packaging. Processes and ingredients used to manufacture ultra-processed foods are designed to create highly profitable (low-cost ingredients, long shelf-life, emphatic branding), convenient (ready-to-consume), hyper-palatable products liable to displace all other NOVA food groups, notably unprocessed or minimally processed foods. A practical way to identify an ultra-processed product is to check to see if its list of ingredients contains at least one item characteristic of the NOVA ultra-processed food group, which is to say, either food substances never or rarely used in kitchens (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated or interesterified oils, and hydrolysed proteins), or classes of additives designed to make the final product palatable or more appealing (such as flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners, and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents).

Surface roughness affects many properties of colloids, from depletion and capillary interactions to their dispersibility and use as emulsion stabilizers. It also impacts particle–particle frictional contacts, which have recently emerged as being responsible for the discontinuous shear thickening (DST) of dense suspensions. Tribological properties of these contacts have been rarely experimentally accessed, especially for nonspherical particles. Here, we systematically tackle the effect of nanoscale surface roughness by producing a library of all-silica, raspberry-like colloids and linking their rheology to their tribology. Rougher surfaces lead to a significant anticipation of DST onset, in terms of both shear rate and solid loading. Strikingly, they also eliminate continuous thickening. DST is here due to the interlocking of asperities, which we have identified as “stick–slip” frictional contacts by measuring the sliding of the same particles via lateral force microscopy (LFM). Direct measurements of particle–particle friction therefore highlight the value of an engineering-tribology approach to tuning the thickening of suspensions.

Pectin is a heterogeneous hydrocolloid present in the primary cell wall and middle lamella in all dicotyledonous plants, more commonly in the outer fruit coat or peel as compared to the inner matrix. Presently, citrus fruits and apple fruits are the main sources for commercial extraction of pectin, but ongoing research on pectin extraction from alternate fruit sources and fruit wastes from processing industries will be of great help in waste product reduction and enhancing the production of pectin. Pectin shows multifunctional applications including in the food industry, the health and pharmaceutical sector, and in packaging regimes. Pectin is commonly utilized in the food industry as an additive in foods such as jams, jellies, low calorie foods, stabilizing acidified milk products, thickener and emulsifier. Pectin is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry for the preparation of medicines that reduce blood cholesterol level and cure gastrointestinal disorders, as well as in cancer treatment. Pectin also finds use in numerous other industries, such as in the preparation of edible films and coatings, paper substitutes and foams. Due to these varied uses of pectin in different applications, there is a great necessity to explore other non-conventional sources or modify existing sources to obtain pectin with desired quality attributes to some extent by rational modifications of pectin with chemical and enzymatic treatments.

Shear thickening in dense particulate suspensions was recently proposed to be driven by the activation of friction above an onset stress needed to overcome repulsive forces between particles. Testing this scenario represents a major challenge because classical rheological approaches do not provide access to the frictional properties of suspensions. Here we adopt a different strategy inspired by pressure-imposed configurations in granular flows that specifically gives access to this information. By investigating the quasi-static avalanche angle, compaction, and dilatancy effects in different nonbuoyant suspensions flowing under gravity, we demonstrate that particles in shear-thickening suspensions are frictionless under low confining pressure. Moreover, we show that tuning the range of the repulsive force below the particle roughness suppresses the frictionless state and also the shear-thickening behavior of the suspension. These results, which link microscopic contact physics to the suspension macroscopic rheology, provide direct evidence that the recent frictional transition scenario applies in real suspensions.

As an important working fluid in tight shale reservoir, supercritical CO 2 has been proven to improve oil recovery efficiently. However, the high filtration caused by the low viscosity of pure supercritical CO 2 hinders its development. The research objective of this investigation is to explore the filtration of supercritical CO 2 with a branched siloxane (BTMT) as a CO 2 thickener and filtration-reducing agent, and analyze the influence level of some parameters about rock core and chemicals on the CO 2 filtration in the tight shale reservoir by using response surface method (RSM). The results demonstrate that the rising temperature causes a gradually increasing filtration, but filtration coefficient ( f ) decreases with increasing the pressure difference P , injection speed, and thickener concentration. The thickener concentration is the factor that causes the greatest change in filtration coefficient according to the response surface method, and the injection speed has the smallest effect on the filtration. The viscosity of fracturing fluid is the main characterization parameter leading to change of filtration coefficient, all factors that contribute to increasing the viscosity of the fracturing fluid will lead to a reduction in the filtration coefficient and an enhanced oil recovery. In addition, the adsorption and reservoir residue of BTMT on low-permeability shale were subordinated to a Langmuir monolayer theory, and a low residual of BTMT in shale can prevent thickeners and fracturing fluids from damaging shale reservoirs. The improvement of thickener and CO 2 fracturing technology provided a basic reference for shale exploitation, greenhouse effect, and reservoir protection.

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) with prominent mechanical properties are well known as the natural reinforcing elements in composites and have received considerable interest over the past decades. Numerous original resources and extraction methods were applied to obtaining CNCs, and the surface properties of CNCs were modified to improve the compatibility with polymeric matrices. Despite these different raw materials and treatments, various novel applications of CNCs have been developed in recent years. Among them, the food-related applications of CNCs have attracted more and more attention because of their renewability, outstanding mechanical properties, unique nanoscale structure, biocompatibility, and easy surface modifications. This review summarized the recent work on the extraction, modification, and food-related applications of CNCs. Traditional raw materials, such as cotton, wood, and tunicate, were still widely used, while there is a new trend to obtain CNCs from waste biomass. Different pretreatments, extraction processes, and surface modifications were compared and discussed. Moreover, the potential applications of CNCs in food packaging, food thickener, emulsion stabilization, quality sensor, and active compound immobilization were presented. Finally, concerns about safety and sustainability have been addressed.

We report direct measurements of spatially resolved stress at the boundary of a shearthickening cornstarch suspension revealing persistent regions of high local stress propagating in the flow direction at the speed of the top boundary. The persistence of these propagating fronts enables precise measurements of their structure, including the profile of boundary stress measured by boundary stress microscopy (BSM) and the nonaffine velocity of particles at the bottom boundary of the suspension measured by particle image velocimetry (PIV). In addition, we directly measure the relative flow between the particle phase and the suspending fluid (fluid migration) and find the migration is highly localized to the fronts and changes direction across the front, indicating that the fronts are composed of a localized region of high dilatant pressure and low particle concentration. The magnitude of the flow indicates that the pore pressure difference driving the fluid migration is comparable to the critical shear stress for the onset of shear thickening. The propagating fronts fully account for the increase in viscosity with applied stress reported by the rheometer and are consistent with the existence of a stable jammed region in contact with one boundary of the system that generates a propagating network of percolated frictional contacts spanning the gap between the rheometer plates and producing strong localized dilatant pressure.

Cellulose is a natural polymer that has a lot of potentials. Cellulose gained more interest owing to its renewability, non-toxicity, economic value, biodegradability, high mechanical properties, high surface area, and biocompatibility. New sources, new isolation processes, and new treatments are currently under development to satisfy the increasing demand for producing new types of bio-based materials on an industrial scale. This article discusses the fundamentals and latest breakthroughs in cellulose biopolymer materials used in the fabrication of composite films owing to the cellulose forming films. Bio-polymers are finding wide applications due to their intrinsic properties such as low density, low thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, and ease of manufacturing complex shapes. Cellulose possesses a highly crystallized structure, hence it is insoluble in typical organic solvents. Environmental restrictions are increasingly stringent, which is a key element leading to the growth of studies on this subject. These hydrocolloids have been modified by taking advantage of their valuable features; the mechanical strength and water resistance of cellulose make it being used as a thickener for large-scale applications such as cellulose composite films can extend the shelf life of a product while maintaining its biodegradability. New materials with high values are a hot topic for future research with commercial interest. These composite film potentials are contributing to the bio-economy. Here, the emphasis on the potential application of bio-composites of cellulose in various industries has been discussed.

Dense particulate suspensions exhibit a dramatic increase in average viscosity above a critical, material-dependent shear stress. This thickening changes from continuous to discontinuous as the concentration is increased. Using direct measurements of spatially resolved surface stresses in the continuous thickening regime, we report the existence of clearly defined dynamic localized regions of substantially increased stress that appear intermittently at stresses above the critical stress. With increasing applied stress, these regions occupy an increasing fraction of the system, and the increase accounts quantitatively for the observed shear thickening. The regions represent high-viscosity fluid phases, with a size determined by the distance between the shearing surfaces and a viscosity that is nearly independent of shear rate but that increases rapidly with concentration. Thus, we find that continuous shear thickening arises from increasingly frequent localized discontinuous transitions between distinct fluid phases with widely differing viscosities.

Fluid thickening is a valid therapeutic strategy for patients with oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD). The main aim of this study was to determine the therapeutic effect of the xanthan-gum-based thickener Tsururinko Quickly (TQ, Morinaga Milk Co., Tokyo, Japan) in older patients with severe OD. A total of 85 patients (83.32 ± 6.75 y) with OD and a penetration–aspiration score (PAS) of n ≥ 3 were studied by videofluoroscopy while swallowing duplicate 10 mL boluses at <50 mPa·s, 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600 mPa·s, to assess the safety and efficacy of swallowing and the biomechanics of a swallowing response at each viscosity level. At <50 mPa·s, only 16.25% patients swallowed safely, 45% had penetrations (PAS 3–5), and 38.75% had aspirations (PAS 6–8). Fluid thickening with TQ greatly increased the prevalence of patients with safe swallowing from 62.90% at 100 mPa·s to 95.24% at 1600 mPa·s in a shear-viscosity-dependent manner. The penetrations and aspirations were significantly reduced to 3.60% and 1.19%, respectively, at 1600 mPa·s. The threshold viscosity was 100 mPa·s and the increasing viscosity above 800 mPa·s did not further improve the therapeutic effect significantly. Increasing the shear viscosity significantly reduced the time to laryngeal vestibule closure (−16.70%), increased the time to upper oesophageal sphincter opening (+26.88%), and reduced the pharyngeal bolus velocity (−31.62%) without affecting the pharyngeal residue. TQ has a strong shear-viscosity-dependent effect on the safety of swallowing in older patients with severe OD without increasing the pharyngeal residue. The therapeutic range for TQ is 100–800 mPa·s, with 200 and 800 mPa·s being the optimal doses to cover the needs of older patients with OD.