In this study, the effects of aqueous guava leaf extract (GvEx) on insulin resistance were evaluated in diet induced insulin-resistant mice. Low (50 mg/kg), middle (150 mg/kg), and high (450 mg/kg) oral dose of GvEx were administrated to the high-fructose-high-fat fed insulin-resistant C57BL/6J mice. Our results showed that administration of high dose GvEx significantly enhanced the glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity and increased the serum adiponectin content. Triglyceride and total cholesterol contents of blood and liver were all significantly decreased after treatment with GvEx. Further, western blot analysis revealed that high dose GvEx significantly enhanced the levels of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)-? and adiponectin in adipose tissue, as well as enhancing the phosphorylation of the AMP-activated protein kinase and PPARs in both liver and skeletal muscle tissues. In addition, the protein levels of phosphorylated protein kinase B and glucose transporter were also induced in liver and skeletal muscle tissues. In conclusion, GvEx can improve the disturbed glucose and lipid homeostasis in diet-induced insulin-resistant C57BL/6J mice. Keywords: metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus, insulin resistance, guava leaf extract

The aim of this work was to determine the effect of different heat treatments ( 1) 90ºC and cooled down immediately to a final temperature of 30ºC, 2) 90ºC during 15s. and immediately cooled down to a final temperature of 30ºC, and 3) commercial treatment) on the colour, pH, total soluble solids, antioxidant capacity, and phenolic compounds of three different vegetal food products: 1.- carrot, orange and coriander soup (COS); 2.- gazpacho (typical Spanish vegetable soup made mainly with tomato, pepper, cucumber, olive oil, vinegar and garlic (GAZ); and 3.- tomato, mint and basil soup (TMS). The results showed that the mentioned parameters were influenced by the heat treatments studied in, depending on the temperature and time of each one, and the different products which were applied. COS and TMB showed the highest antioxidant capacity values in their respective commercial samples. However, GAZ treated at 90ºC and 90ºC/15s. kept the same antioxidant capacity levels that the tank sample (untreated). The colour, pH and total soluble solids parameters remained practically without significant changes produced by the different heat treatments applied, demonstrating that the applied treatments can be more effective than commercial in order to preserve shelf life of these products, and keeping the majority of their crucial properties in these kinds of foods. For that, the results here presented are of significant interest for agro-food industry. Keywords: Heat treatment, bioactivity, quality, cold soups, vegetables.

Rice wine, an ancient drink of China, commonly has different origins and wine ages according to traditional processing methods, inducing great challenges to be authenticated and discriminated rapidly by conventional procedures. This study sought to develop an easy and reliable method, based on a Tri-step infrared spectroscopy, combined with electronic sensory for accurate and rapid discrimination of rice wine (RW). The class of nutrition (lipids, protein and other compounds), wine ages and origins were step-wisely evaluated and nutrition profile variations among different samples were integrated and interpreted by fast identification of their relative contents, based on spectral peak intensity. 140 batches of RW (twenty for each samples) were effectively classified by IR-PCA. In the sensory aspect, an electronic tongue distinguished rice wine objectively in taste with discrimination indexes that were greater than 95 for all the samples. The developed method would be an economic and simple approach for rapid chemotaxonomic discrimination of RW. Key words: rice wine; identification; infrared spectroscopy; electronic tongue.

High efficiency and less solvent consumption are the essential requirements of high-speed counter current chromatography (HSCCC), especially for the preparation and purification of natural products. In this manuscript, an efficient HSCCC strategy with preparative high performance liquid chromatography (preparative-HPLC) was successfully developed to rapidly separate and purify six lupane-type triterpenoids (including acankoreoside C (1), acangraciliside S (2), acankoreoside B (3), acankoreoside D (4), acantrifoside A (5) and acankoreoside A (6)) from leaves of the Acanthopanax gracilistylus. The effective separation was achieved using ethyl acetate–n-butanol–methanol–water (3:0.3:0.8:4, v/v/v/v) as the two-phase solvent system, in which the mobile phase was eluted at an optimized flow rate of 2.0 mL/min and a revolution speed of 900 rpm. HSCCC preparation was performed on 400 mg of crude sample yielding 5.3 mg of compound 3, 6.4 mg of compound 4, 10.6 mg of compound 5, 35.8 mg of compound 6 with purities of 95.6%, 96.3%, 96.1%, 97.2%, respectively, 17.2 mg of a mixture of compounds 1 and 2, which was further separated by preparative-HPLC yielding 5.9 mg of compound 1, and 4.5 mg of compound 2 with purities of 96.8% and 94.6%, respectively, as determined by HPLC at 210 nm. Their chemical structures were identified by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology. All compounds were evaluated for their anti-inflammatory activity with lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced RAW264.7 cell. The compounds 3 and 4 showed weakly inhibitory effect of nitric oxide (NO) production with low cytotoxicity. Keywords Acanthopanax gracilistylus, High-speed counter current chromatography (HSCCC), Preparative-HPLC, Nitric oxide (NO), Cytotoxicity

Most of the lamb diets are based on soybean meal as the main protein source, often imported and derived from genetically modified varieties, which is not possible to use in organic meat production. Use of faba bean to replace soybean meal as main protein source in the diet of Fabrianese lambs was investigated. Growth performance, dressing percentage, physical and chemical characteristics of longissimus thoracis and its fatty acid composition were investigated. Twenty-four Fabrianese entire male lambs were weaned at 59±5 days of age and were divided into two homogeneous groups (n = 12), then fed for 78 days with two different experimental diets. One group received a concentrate including 242 g/kg of faba bean (FB), the other group was fed on concentrate including 160 g/kg of soybean meal (SBM). Carcass quality, meat chemical composition and meat tenderness were not influenced by dietary treatment. The total amount of n-3 fatty acids was significantly (P < 0.05) higher in lambs fed with FB, with a consequent more favourable n-6/n-3 ratio. Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLA) content was significantly (P < 0.05) higher in meat obtained from lambs fed FB diet. FB can replace SBM in concentrate mixtures for fattening lambs without adverse effects in growth performances and in carcass quality, causing a significant improvement of meat acidic profile, particularly considering n-3 fatty acids and CLA content. Key words: Faba beans, soybean meal, meat tenderness, fatty acids, CLA