Feed Technology to Fight Obesity and Hyper Cholesterolemia

Obesity has become a major problem in the UAE. Over 60% of Emirati, nationals are overweight. One of the chief causes of obesity is diet. Young Emiratis eat more and more high- carbohydrate, high-fat burgers and pizza in fast-food restaurants. Across the UAE over recent years, there has been a steady increase in food –energy consumption. Parents do not teach good eating habits to children, and many people lack knowledge about good nutrition or a balanced diet. The incidence of obesity in the UAE is amongst the highest in the world. Some studies estimate it to be close to 70%. There is an alarmingly high level of obesity between both the local and expatriate populations and the reason can be attributed to lifestyle and diet.
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy. Body mass index (BMI), which compares weight and height, is used to define a person as overweight (pre-obese) when their BMI is between 25 kg/m2 and 30 kg/m2 and obese when it is greater than 30 kg/m2.
The per capita dietary energy supply varies markedly between different regions and countries. It has also changed significantly over time. From the early 1970s to the late 1990s the average calories available per person per day (the amount of food bought) has increased in all parts of the world except Eastern Europe. The United States had the highest availability with 3,654 calories per person in 1996. This increased further in 2002 to 3,770. During the late 1990s, Europeans had 3394 calories per person, in the developing areas of Asia there were 2,648 calories per person, and in sub-Sahara Africa, people had 2,176 calories per person.
The widespread availability of nutritional guidelines has done little to address the problems of overeating and poor dietary choices. In the period of 1971–2000, obesity rates in the United States increased from 14.5% to 30.9%. During the same time, an increase occurred in the average amount of calories consumed. For women, the average increase was 335 calories per day (1,542 calories in 1971 and 1,877 calories in 2004); while for men, the average increase was 168 calories per day (2,450 calories in 1971 and 2,618 calories in 2004). Most of these extra calories came from an increase in carbohydrate consumption rather than an increase in fat consumption. The primary sources of these extra carbohydrates are sweetened beverages, which now accounts for almost 25 percent of daily calories in young adults in America. Consumption of sweetened drinks is believed to be contributing to the rising rates of obesity.
Along with high carbohydrate diet the usage of high fat diet, contribute the increase the cholesterol in blood. The cholesterol content in various foods is given below.

Table 1. Cholesterol in Foods

Cholesterol is a lipid, waxy alcohol found in the cell membranes and transported in the blood plasma of all animals. It is an essential component of mammalian cell membranes where it is required to establish proper membrane permeability and fluidity. Cholesterol is the principal sterol synthesized by animals, but small quantities are synthesized in other eukaryotes, such as plants and fungi. It is almost completely absent among prokaryotes, which include bacteria. Although cholesterol is essential for life, high levels in circulation are associated with atherosclerosis. Cholesterol can be ingested in the diet, recycled within the body through re-absorption of bile in the digestive tract, and produced de novo. For a person of about 150 pounds (68 kg), typical total body cholesterol content is about 35 g, typical daily dietary intake is 200–300 mg in the United States and societies with similar dietary patterns and 1 g per day is synthesized de novo.

Animal fats are complex mixtures of triglycerides, with lesser amounts of phospholipids and cholesterol. Consequently, all foods containing animal fat contain cholesterol to varying extents. Major dietary sources of cholesterol include cheese, egg yolks, beef, pork, poultry, and shrimp. Human breast milk also contains significant quantities of cholesterol. Cholesterol is not present in plant based food sources unless it has been added during the food's preparation. However, plant products such as flax seeds and peanuts contain healthy cholesterol-like compounds called phytosterols, which are suggested to help lower serum cholesterol levels.
Total fat intake, especially saturated fat and Trans fat, plays a larger role in blood cholesterol than intake of cholesterol itself. Saturated fat is present in full fat dairy products, animal fats, and several types of oil and chocolate. Trans fats are derived from the partial hydrogenation of unsaturated fats, and in contrast, to other types of fat, they are not essential for life. A change in diet may help reduce blood cholesterol in addition to other lifestyle modifications. Avoiding animal products may decrease the cholesterol levels in the body not through dietary cholesterol reduction alone, but primarily through a reduced saturated fat intake. Those wishing to reduce their cholesterol through a change in diet should aim to consume less than 7% of their daily calories from saturated fat and less than 200mg of cholesterol per day.
The view that a change in diet (specifically, a reduction in dietary fat and cholesterol) can lower blood cholesterol levels, and thus reduce the likelihood of development of, amongst others, coronary artery disease (CHD) has been challenged. An alternative view is that the organs such as the liver, which will increase, counteract any reductions to dietary cholesterol intake or decrease production of cholesterol to keep blood cholesterol levels constant.

 The above deliberations explicitly signify the importance of animal products in human foods that elevate cholesterol. The animal feeds control the animal production in Toto since the feeds are transformed into animal products in the system. The feed nutrients like protein, fat and carbohydrates are bio-synthesised into animal protein, fat in the milk, meat and egg. The carbohydrates particularly starch and fibre are metabolized to glucose and oxidized to provide energy for the synthesis of milk meat and egg. However; a large quantity of glucose is converted into milk lactose and oxidized to synthesis milk fat de novo in the udder. In order to control the quality of the animal products the feeds shall be produced with stringent quality specifications. Any defect in the feeds would transform into the animal products, which are the human foods.
The main source of dietary energy in animal feeds is cereal grains. The animal feeds would have the nutrients in the following proportions.
As per the above, the major nutrient is starch energy in feeds. In order to increase the production the fats are being incorporated into feeds recently.

Adding fat to the diet of high producing dairy cows has become a common practice for most high producing herds Energy demands exceed energy intake for 80 to 100 days postpartum. Cereal grains can provide an economical source of energy, but fiber minimums and excessive of fermentable carbohydrate limit the amount that can be fed. Fat supplements can provide a concentrated source of added energy without changing ration fiber and carbohydrate dynamics.
However; due to its high content of LDL-raising saturated fatty acids (SFA), milk fat has been considered to be hypercholesterolemia, The fat-modified milk seems to have positive effects on the LDL/HDL ratio and the lipoprotein concentrations, both of which have been established as risk factors for coronary heart disease.
It is a fact that feeding unsaturated fats increased long- chain unsaturated fatty acids in milk fat including conjugated linoleic acid. Feeding dairy cows with rumen protected n-3 fatty acids (FAs) derived from oilseeds or marine oils significantly increased the proportion of these acids in milk fat. The above concept could be well implemented through the right feed technology process.

In order to increase the dietary energy the addition of oil and fat is recently practiced in poultry rations. Several workers have suggested the use of fatty acids in the diet for energy because of the colossal release of ATP while lipid is metabolized in the system. Those fatty acids released into blood could be clubbed into triglycerides which may be transported to liver where VLDL is formed. Feeding fats provide a concentrated source of energy, but alter the fatty acids profile in egg, meat and milk fat. The fatty acid composition of yolk lipids was affected by fatty acids C16:0, C18:0, C18:1n9, C18:2n6, C20:4n6, C20:5n3 and C22:6n3. The addition of oils to the diets fed to hens allowed the production of eggs with higher n3/n6 and PUFA/SFA fatty acid ratios than the eggs from control hens. It was concluded that the amounts of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in egg yolk could be altered by dietary manipulation.
Even though there are distinct advantages on feeding fat on animal production, its effect on lipid profile of human cannot be rules out. When the obesity and hyper cholesterolemia are increasing among the population the above feed technology, practice needs to be evaluated professionally.

There has been a recent advance in feed technology and animal nutrition to develop sugar syrup an intermediary product of sugar refining to develop as energy feed for livestock. In the Middle East where the cost of grains is increasing exponentially the development of sugar syrup has been considered a recourse to poultry feed. Al Khaleej Sugar Co’s Research & Development team examined the possibilities of developing a sugar feed for animal production. Under the professional leadership of Mr. Jamal Al Ghurair, the new feed Sugar syrup was evolved. There was research data even though scarce on feeding sugar to animals. The NRC had published a ration for poultry with 15% pure sucrose in 1994 publication. Several other research papers described the advantage of sugar feeding. The concept of better metabolisible of sugar than starch supported the development work in AKS. The table below indicates the superior metabolisibility of sugar to starch. The total conversion of sugar to glucose without any indigestible matter supports the theory .

The research work carried out with sugar syrup supported the concept of sugar feeding for animal production. The broiler chicken fed with graded levels of Sugar syrup showed equal growth with the chicken fed with Corn and vegetable fat. The reduction of 55 % to 72% vegetable oil in the feed by replacing with Sugar syrup maintained the growth as given below.

The cholesterol (LDL) and triglycerides were found lower in the sugar syrup fed chicken.

In order to control the unscientific compounding of animal feeds which is ultimately transformed into milk, meat and egg a strong Feed Act formulated with latest feed science research and human nutrition expertise is very vital. In order to enact the law, quality specifications for various feeds should be made mendatory. The various nutritional requirements prevailing in the developed countries e.g NRC, ARC could be accepted as standards to work out feed standards. The feed manufacturers have to abide with the above standards. The Municipality labs should check the samples randomly. The above practice would avoid the marketing of poor quality feeds in the country. This would also stop the import of contaminated feeds into the country.

The above technological development would certainly help UAE to bring sea changes in the production of animal products with lower fat and cholesterol. It is necessary that feed act shall be enacted to restrict the liberal usage of fats in feed ignoring the increase in cholesterol level in milk meat and egg. The local developed technology should be given a boost in all level to improve the healthy food production in the country.