N-epsilon-(carboxymethyl)lysine content of foods commonly consumed in a Western style diet

The potential adverse effects on health of diet-derived advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) is of current interest, due to their proposed involvement in the disease progression of diabetic and uraemic conditions. However, accurate information about levels of AGEs in foods is lacking. The objective of this investigation was to determine the level of one particular AGE, N-epsilon-(carboxymethyl)lysine (CML), a marker of AGE formation, in a wide range of foods commonly consumed in a Western style diet. Individual foods (n = 257) were mixed, lyophilised, ground, reduced, fat-extracted, hydrolysed, and underwent solid-phase extraction. Extracts were analysed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). Cereal (2.6 mg/100 g food) and fruit and vegetable (0.13 mg/100 g food) categories had the highest and lowest mean level of CML, respectively, when expressed in mg/100 g food. These data can be used for estimating potential consumer intakes, and provide information that can be used to educated consumers on how to reduce their CML intake. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Berryman, Sexton and the Possibilities of Poetic Language

This paper examines a select number of poems by Middle Generation poets John Berryman and Anne Sexton in relation to questions of death, silence and the task that literature sets itself as understood in key works by Blanchot, Heidegger, and Levinas. Rather than recourse to the overtrodden critical path of confessional interpretations of their work, this paper connects Berryman’s The Dream Songs (1969) and two Sexton poems (‘Oh’ and ‘The Silence’) to the philosophical determinations of what it is language can say and what demands literature makes of the writer prepared to risk their own being in answer to its call. Central issues such as suicide and the originating silence of the work of art are intricately interwoven with Berryman’s and Sexton’s work. Leaving aside their biographies, and by approaching suicide as a philosophical problem with which their poetry wrestles, a restructured approach to their work becomes available. The impulse to suicide and the mental processes involved in considering and committing the act are instincts and responses located within an individual’s own psychology. For these writers particularly such issues are sited within a philosophical debate about language, what it can and cannot represent. If poetry articulates language’s argument about its own capability, it is the ideal forum for philosophical confrontations with the possibilities of existence as represented by the grave decision to take one’s own life. © The Author 2013.