'Tearless' Onions May Fight Heart Disease, Weight Gain
Onions, a key ingredient in recipes around the globe, come in a tearless version that scientists are now reporting could pack health benefits like its close relative, garlic, which is renowned for protecting against heart disease. They published their laboratory analysis, which suggests a similar heart-friendly role for the tearless onions, as well as a possible role in managing weight gain, in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/11/tearless-onions-may-fight-heart-disease-weight-gain
Researchers Uncover Onions’ Sulfurous Secrets
Plants are a rich resource of bioactive compounds, many of which have inspired therapeutic drugs. Yet countless plant compounds, potentially with medical uses, still remain to be identified. Kazuki Saito, Ryo Nakabayashi and colleagues from the RIKEN Plant Science Center have now developed a technique for rapidly cataloging subsets of compounds in plant extracts based on mass spectrometry data as a first step toward a fully automated system for cataloging novel plant compounds.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/researchers-uncover-onions%E2%80%99-sulfurous-secrets
Onion Waste Absorbs Heavy Metals
Onion and garlic waste from the food industry could be used to mop up hazardous heavy metals, including arsenic, cadmium, iron, lead, mercury and tin in contaminated materials, according to a research paper published in Inderscience’s International Journal of Environment and Pollution.
Biotechnologists Rahul Negi, Gouri Satpathy, Yogesh Tyagi and Rajinder Gupta of the GGS Indraprastha Univ., explain how waste from the processing and canning of onion (Allium cepa L.) and garlic (Allium sativum L.) could be used as an alternative remediation material for removing toxic elements from contaminated materials including industrial effluent.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/12/onion-waste-absorbs-heavy-metals