Mind Your Meatballs

Meatball lovers, take note! ARS food safety researchers studied ways to cook meatballs so that any bacteria in the meat is sure to be killed. They came up with times and temperatures that chefs and home cooks can use to safely cook beef or veal meatballs. Learn more at "Study Shows Safest Ways To Cook Meatballs."

ARS Helps Farmers and Ranchers Prospect for Non-Fossil Oil and Gas

Agricultural producers may soon hit a trifecta – the ability to clean up the environment, reduce dependence on fossil fuel, and create a new source of income.

ARS scientists at the Eastern Regional Research Center are testing a thermo-catalytic system to help farmers and ranchers convert farm and ranch leftovers and waste to sources of bioenergy (oil and gas), and high-value by-products. The system uses heat in a no-oxygen environment, called pyrolysis, to create crude bio-oil and bio-char.

The Combustion Reduction Integrated Pyrolysis System (CRIPS) travels to farms and can run “off-the-grid” to process low-value crop leftovers like grasses grown on marginal-quality lands, forest residues, and animal manure. CRIPS can produce about 40 gallons of gasoline-quality fuel per 1,000 pounds of dry farm waste

Read the blog to learn more.

Imperfect Fruits and Veggies Get a Second Chance

Fruits and veggies that are too small, blemished, or oddly shaped probably won’t make it to your grocery store’s produce section, but thanks to ARS, they might end up in the healthy-snack aisle instead. To help reduce food waste, ARS food technologists created tasty new products, like fruit bars, wraps, and snacks, made from fruits and vegetables that might not be perfect, but are still nutritious.

Read Turning Food Waste into Healthful Delights to learn more.

Science and Serendipity Defeat Invasion of the Air Potato

The plot could have come from Hollywood — an insidious alien invader threatens to overrun the land, but intrepid scientists discover a secret weapon in the far-off, exotic land of Nepal and bring the pestilence to heel. But this is not fiction; it’s true.

The air potato plant (Dioscorea bulbifera) is an exotic vine from Asia that was introduced to Florida about 115 years ago to make medicine. After escaping from the lab, it multiplied and smothered native plant communities in all of Florida’s 67 counties in vines that grew 6 inches per day.

All attempts to manage the air potato were unsuccessful, until scientists from the ARS Invasive Plant Research Laboratory in Fort Lauderdale, FL, made their historic trip to Nepal.

To learn more read this article.

How Can an App Beef Up Cattle Production?

Everyone would like to see a few extra dollars in their wallets, right? Ranchers are no exception, and researchers at ARS’ Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, NE, are developing a web-based tool that will help cattle producers do just that. Called iGENDEC, for internet genetic decisions, the internet app will give beef cattle producers a way to select the best bull for their herds. Early testing has shown promising results.

Read Want To Beef Up Cattle Production? There Will Soon Be an App for That to learn more.

Grape Expectations

When was the last time you had to pick seeds out of your teeth when you ate a grape? Most likely, never! That's because ARS has bred "seedless" grape varieties with seeds so tiny that you can't even detect them.

Popular varieties include Flame Seedless, Crimson Seedless, Thomcord, and Autumn King, to name just a few. Sunpreme is a variety perfect for drying raisins on the vine. ARS pioneered a technique called "embryo rescue" to create new seedless varieties from existing ones.

Watch this video New Sunpreme Grape Variety from USDA-ARS

Really-Good-For-You Health Bars

Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals we need in small amounts for best health. ARS researchers helped formulate a tasty fruit-based bar with specific micronutrients and other health-promoting ingredients. Study participants who ate two bars a day for 8 weeks had improvements in several health indicators without making any other dietary changes.

To learn more read "Micronutrient-Packed Bar Improving Metabolic Health Goes Commercial."

ARS in Your Pizza

Great pizza needs great ingredients! Did you know that two of those were developed by ARS?

The oblong-shaped Roma (or "plum") tomato was developed in 1955 in Beltsville, MD, by ARS scientist William Porte. It was bred from the San Marzano and Red Top varieties to resist wilt and pests and grow well in different climates. But it also has a heavy, fleshy outer wall that makes it perfect for making sauces for pizza and spaghetti. And it contains lycopene, a nutrient with anticancer properties.

Mozzarella cheese is gooey and tasty topping for pizza, but it adds fat. ARS scientists in Wyndmoor, PA, invented a technology for making lower-fat mozzarella cheese that retains its stretchy, meltable texture and delicious flavor. They did this by modifying the network of the milk protein casein. The cheese has been widely used in school lunch programs since 1995.

Read Celebrating 15 Years of a Healthy School Lunch Option.

Can Baby Food Affect Your Health As An Adult?

Do you ever wonder what the future holds? No, we’re not talking about staring into crystal balls or reading tea leaves. A scientist in Houston, TX, has stumbled onto the answer of how what you eat at certain stages of life may determine your future health, and it’s call epigenetics.

Robert Waterland, professor of pediatrics-nutrition at the ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine, found a naturally occurring process in which DNA molecules are modified in ways that affect gene expression – including genes that regulate the body’s ability to use sugar. This premature epigenetic process may help explain how overnutrition during infancy increases the risk of diabetes later in life.

Waterland said we still have a lot to learn about these complex processes, but one promising insight is that this might present opportunities for pharmacological interventions to slow or even reverse epigenetic aging, if we can understand it.

Want to learn more? Read "Infant Overnutrition May Lead to Health Problems Later in Life".