Food insecurity affects food intake, and it could prevent an individual from consuming enough nutritious food to support and maintain health. The aim of this paper is to determine the prevalence and factors influencing food insecurity among Malaysian households. In 2014, the Malaysian Adult Nutrition Survey (MANS) was carried out, and one of the components measured was food insecurity. Six out of sixteen questions from the food security core-module questionnaire were adopted and answered by 2962 adults. The results showed that about 25.0% adult experienced food quantity insufficiency, 25.5% had food variety insufficiency, 21.9% practised reduced size of the meal, and 15.2% skipped main meal due to lack of money to spend on. For the parents, 23.7% only rely on cheap food to feed children, and 20.8% could not afford to purchase various foods to feed their children. Location, strata, race, level of education, working status and household income shows significant difference while none of the nutritional status components found to be difference in all six parameters of food insecurity measured. Logistic regression with adjusted odds ratios discovered race, education level and household income were related to risk to all six parameters of food insecurity. In conclusion, food insecurity can be a serious problem in Malaysia. An effective and comprehensive effort by the government in terms of policy solution is required to increase education level and ensure an adequate income for every household. Therefore, future research should focus on some of those promising policy solutions and at the same time, study the other possible underlying factors that may lead to food insecurity.
Food Insecurity ; Malaysia ; Adult ; Nutrition Survey

Aims: The cellulase complexes of Trichoderma reesei are relatively low in endoglucanase and β-glucosidase activity compared with exoglucanase. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of Humicola insolens recombinant endoglucanase on the activities of commercial cellulases, Celluclast® and Acellerase® BG, during the hydrolysis of pretreated oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) fibres to simple sugars. Methodology and results: An endoglucanase (CMC3) from H. insolens ATTC 16454 was expressed in Pichia pastoris. The recombinant protein was purified and verified by SDS-PAGE and Western blot. The enzymatic hydrolysis of OPEFB fibres was carried out at 55 °C for 72 h and 1:40 and 1:100 mixtures of CMC3 and Celluclast® were used. All reaction mixtures were added with commercial β-glucosidase, Accelerase® BG, at a fixed concentration of 116 mg/mL. The sugars produced were analysed by high-performance liquid chromatography. Two sugar peaks were successfully resolved at different retention times and were identified as xylose and glucose. At Celluclast®-to-CMC3 activity ratio of 1:100, the highest reducing sugar concentration was obtained, whereby the glucose and xylose production increased by ~59% and ~27%, respectively. Conclusion, significance and impact of study Recombinant CMC3 can act synergistically with Celluclast® and Accelerase® BG to increase the production of glucose and xylose from pretreated OPEFB fibre. This study contributes greatly towards the development of efficient cellulase enzyme cocktail for the efficient hydrolysis of OPEFB biomass and the production of simple and fermentable sugars.

Introduction: Milk and dairy products are good sources of high-quality protein. Protein is important during weight loss and subsequent weight maintenance due to the high satiating effect which helps to prevent over-consumption of energy and thereby reduces body fat stores. Furthermore, dairy protein is a good source of essential amino acids for muscle protein synthesis and thus helps to maintain metabolically active muscle mass during weight loss. Regarding milk consumption, it is important to find the association between personal, environmental, and behaviour factors with consuming milk. Objective: The aim of the study is to identify factors influencing milk consumption behaviour among adults. Methods : This study is based on the literature review and on different case studies from different parts of the world to try to fulfill the main scope of factors influencing milk consumption. Results: Based on this review, environmental factors were found to be the main influences on milk consumption behaviour, followed by personal factors and behaviour factors. Conclusion This review is also expected to enrich the documentation on the influencing of milk consumption behaviour among adults

Aims: This study was aimed to express Meyerozyma guilliermondii strain RT lipase using Komagataella phaffii X-33 expression system and its biochemical characterization and analyse the predicted structure of the product. Methodology and results: Meyerozyma guilliermondii strain RT obtained from the previous study was used as the source of RT lipase gene. Extracellular M. guilliermondii strain RT lipase expression has significantly been improved up to 56 U/mg at 24 h cultivation in Yeast extract-Peptone-Dextrose (YPD) medium containing (in w/v): 1% yeast extract, 2% peptone, 2% dextrose with 0.5% v/v methanol induction. Characterization of RT lipase showed optimum activity at 45 °C and pH 9. It exhibited stability in the alkaline pH range (8 to 10) and retained 50% of its residual activity at 30 °C for 30 min. Substrate specificity analysis revealed that it preferred short to medium-chain triacylglycerols (C2-C12) with the highest activity towards caprylic acid (C8). Pairwise alignment revealed three substitutions (S2L, S92L and S193L) present in non-CTG-clade hosts (K. phaffii). Homology modelling (YASARA) was used to predict the structures of RT lipase [wild type (wt) and recombinant (rc)]. Mutational analysis of the structures showed the differences in loops that might attribute to the reduction of the optimum temperature from 75 °C (wt) to 45 °C (rc). Conclusion, significance and impact of study RT lipase was successfully overexpressed extracellularly using K. phaffii expression system with 91.8-fold higher specific activity than the native host. The conceptual advances on the importance of codon optimization before expressing a protein from a CTG-clade species in a non-CTG-clade yeast have been highlighted and the effect of the rare codon usage in recombinant protein characteristics has been evident.
Candida ; Lipase--analysis

Introduction: Dengue fever is one of the world’s most severe mosquito-borne diseases, with high morbidity and mortality rate. Poor dengue prevention practices are one of the factors contributing to dengue outbreak. National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) have collected lots of population data on the prevalence of various non-communicable and communicable diseases, including dengue. NHMS 2020 however, focus on communicable diseases i.e., Dengue, Malaria, HIV & Covid-19. Notwithstanding, data on Cognitive, Affective and Behaviour (CAB) domains are scarce. Thus, this study was aimed to develop and validate CAB questionnaire on dengue in Malaysia. Material and Methods: The questionnaire was developed by adapting and improvising similar previous questionnaires used during NHMS 2015, selected published questionnaires, expert panel and literature review. A sample of 200 respondents was used to evaluate the internal consistency of the final instrument. Results: 5 experts reviewed the content validity of the CAB questionnaire while 20 respondents tested its face validity. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients scores were within the acceptable range from 0.661 to 0.677. Various adjustments were made by deleting items with low Cronbach alpha values in attempt to attain the highest possible alpha values, but further deduction could not be made due to the retention of several important domain-measurement items. Conclusions: The validity and reliability of the CAB-IHBR-Dengue-A-01 questionnaire were of ‘acceptable’ ranges and can be used to assess CAB. The questionnaire is a valid and reliable tool for assessing the CAB’s ability to influence dengue prevention among Malaysians.