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Reliable tables of glycemic index (GI) compiled from the scientific literature are instrumental in improving the quality of research examining the relation between GI, glycemic load, and health. The GI has proven to be a more useful nutritional concept than is the chemical classification of carbohydrate (as simple or complex, as sugars or starches, or as available or unavailable), permitting new insights into the relation between the physiologic effects of carbohydrate-rich foods and health. Several prospective observational studies have shown that the chronic consumption of a diet with a high glycemic load (GI x dietary carbohydrate content) is independently associated with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. This revised table contains almost 3 times the number of foods listed in the original table (first published in this Journal in 1995) and contains nearly 1300 data entries derived from published and unpublished verified sources, representing > 750 different types of foods tested with the use of standard methods. The revised table also lists the glycemic load associated with the consumption of specified serving sizes of different foods.
Ascorbic acid is one of the important water soluble vitamins. It is essential for collagen, carnitine and neurotransmitters biosynthesis. Most plants and animals synthesize ascorbic acid for their own requirement. However, apes and humans can not synthesize ascorbic acid due to lack of an enzyme gulonolactone oxidase. Hence, ascorbic acid has to be supplemented mainly through fruits, vegetables and tablets. The current US recommended daily allowance (RDA) for ascorbic acid ranges between 100–120 mg/per day for adults. Many health benefits have been attributed to ascorbic acid such as antioxidant, anti-atherogenic, anti-carcinogenic, immunomodulator and prevents cold etc. However, lately the health benefits of ascorbic acid has been the subject of debate and controversies viz., Danger of mega doses of ascorbic acid? Does ascorbic acid act as a antioxidant or pro-oxidant ? Does ascorbic acid cause cancer or may interfere with cancer therapy? However, the Panel on dietary antioxidants and related compounds stated that the in vivo data do not clearly show a relationship between excess ascorbic acid intake and kidney stone formation, pro-oxidant effects, excess iron absorption. A number of clinical and epidemiological studies on anti-carcinogenic effects of ascorbic acid in humans did not show any conclusive beneficial effects on various types of cancer except gastric cancer. Recently, a few derivatives of ascorbic acid were tested on cancer cells, among them ascorbic acid esters showed promising anticancer activity compared to ascorbic acid. Ascorbyl stearate was found to inhibit proliferation of human cancer cells by interfering with cell cycle progression, induced apoptosis by modulation of signal transduction pathways. However, more mechanistic and human in vivo studies are needed to understand and elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying the anti-carcinogenic property of ascorbic acid. Thus, though ascorbic acid was discovered in 17th century, the exact role of this vitamin/nutraceutical in human biology and health is still a mystery in view of many beneficial claims and controversies.
The cultivated potato, Solanum tuberosum, ultimately traces its origin to Andean and Chilean landraces developed by pre-Colombian cultivators. These Andean landraces exhibit tremendous morphological and genetic diversity, and are distributed throughout the Andes, from western Venezuela to northern Argentina, and in southern Chile. The wild species progenitors of these landraces have long been in dispute, but all hypotheses center on a group of approximately 20 morphologically very similar tuber-bearing (Solanum section Petota) wild taxa referred to as the S. brevicaule complex, distributed from central Peru to northern Argentina. We present phylogenetic analyses based on the representative cladistic diversity of 362 individual wild (261) and landrace (98) members of potato (all tuber-bearing) and three outgroup non-tuber-bearing members of Solanum section Etuberosum, genotyped with 438 robust amplified fragment length polymorphisms. Our analyses are consistent with a hypothesis of a "northern" (Peru) and "southern" (Bolivia and Argentina) cladistic split for members of the S. brevicaule complex, and with the need for considerable reduction of species in the complex. In contrast to all prior hypotheses, our data support a monophyletic origin of the landrace cultivars from the northern component of this complex in Peru, rather than from multiple independent origins from various northern and southern members.
