A healthy diet plays a key role in the prevention and management of cardiovascular diseases. Dark chocolate in particular has been shown to improve endothelial functions and lipid profile and to have cardiovascular protective effects via an inhibitory action on platelet functions. Recently, several studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of chocolate, primarily on hypertension and othe...

AIM To investigate the acidogenic response of plaque with various European chocolates of varying cocoa contents. METHODS 14 subjects participated in the study. On each test day plaque pH measurements were taken at baseline and at 2, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 minutes after challenge with the test chocolates or control foods. A plaque sample was removed from the buccal surfaces of posterior teeth re...

Can farmers change micro-climates around their crops as an adaptation to climate change? We present a novel adaptation technique for pistachio growers in California, meant to deal with warm winters. A kaolin clay mud is sprayed on dormant trees, blocking sunlight and lowering tree bud temperatures, preventing adverse yield effects of low chill. Climate predictions for California suggest that wi...

Automated processing and classiication of real-time X-ray images of randomly oriented touching pistachio nuts is discussed. The ultimate objective is the development of a system for automated non-invasive detection of defective product items on a conveyor belt. This approach involves two main steps: preprocessing and classiication. Preprocessing locates individual items and segments ones that t...

The effect of different air temperatures (40, 50, 60 and 70°C), air velocities (1 and 2 m/s) and bed depth (monolayer, 3 and 5 cm) on drying kinetics and lipid quality (peroxide value and free fatty acids) of a variety of Persian Pistachio nuts (Abasali variety) were studied. Additionally, effective diffusivity (D ) was determined eff by using Fick’s second law varied from 7.061×10 to 2.105×10 ...

The essential oils of the fruits and the leaves of pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) were analyzed by GC and GC/MS. Fresh unripe pistachio fruits were richer in essential oil (0.5%, w/w) than the leaves (0.1%, w/w). Twenty one compounds were identified in the essential oil of the fruits and the major components were (+)-alpha-pinene (54.6%) and terpinolene (31.2%). The enantiomeric ratio of the majo...

Several agro-industrial wastes (as chestnut and pistachio shells, grass, leaf fruit, vine leaf, and, red and white grape stems) were evaluated to ferulic acid extraction. The chemical analysis of these raw materials shows a high content of xylan in pistachio shells (33%), following the biorefinery concept, this fraction can be used in xylitol manufacture. The lignocellulosic materials were subm...

This paper highlights the capability of artificial neural networks for predicting shelf life of milky white dessert jeweled with pistachio. Linear layer (train) and generalized regression models were developed and compared with each other. Neurons in each hidden layers varied from 1 to 30. Data samples were divided into two sets, i.e., 80% of data samples were used for training and 20% for vali...

Roasting of whole-kernels is an important step in the production of pistachio paste. The effect of hot air roasting temperatures (90-190°C) and times (5-65 min) on the hardness, moisture content and colour attributes (‘L’, ‘a’ and ‘b’ values and yellowness index) of both whole-kernel and ground-state were investigated using response surface methodology (RSM). Increases in roasting temperature a...

To cite: Kwok CS, Boekholdt SM, Lentjes MAH, et al. Heart 2015;101:1279–1287. ABSTRACT Objective To examine the association between chocolate intake and the risk of future cardiovascular events. Methods We conducted a prospective study using data from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC)-Norfolk cohort. Habitual chocolate intake was quantified using the baseline food freque...