The vegetable intake of Japanese has been insufficient against the target (350 g/day) for decades. We believe that one of the reasons for this is the lack of opportunity to know one's own vegetable intake correctly, therefore we developed a device to estimate vegetable intake by measuring skin carotenoid levels easily and non-invasively. For measuring skin carotenoid levels, a sensor which could detect a specific range of wavelength of light reflected from the skin was used. Multiple studies, including ours, have suggested that skin carotenoid levels measured by the sensor show a statistically significant positive correlation with blood carotenoid concentrations and vegetable intake calculated by dietary surveys although the correlation between skin carotenoid levels and vegetable intake was relatively low. The measured value has been suggested to associate with the results of several items of health checkup, especially those related to metabolic syndrome such as body mass index, visceral fat area, blood pressure, fasting blood sugar, and serum lipid, etc. It has also been found that regular measurement of skin carotenoid levels contributes to habituation of vegetable intake behavior. In the near future, we expect that this kind of measurements will become widespread in the field of dietary guidance.

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Objective: Phosphatidylinositol 50（ PI 50） intake has been shown to stimulate neuronal activation and nerve cell proliferation, which may enhance learning and memory ability in rats. In the present study, we aimed to clarify whether these effects of PI 50 are due to phosphatidylinositol（ PI） by using treatments of PI-degraded preparations compared with PI 50 in a rat model. Methods: Male Wistar rats were divided into（1） distilled water,（2） PI 50, and（3） PI degraded preparation administration groups. The effects of oral administration of PI 50 or a PI-degraded preparation on memory and learning ability in rats were investigated using behavioral and molecular biological techniques. Results: We found that the group administered with PI 50 showed improvements in spatial memory, and learning ability, as well as increased c-Fos- and BrdU-positive cells in the hippocampus, and showed a significant increase in BDNF, PKC- α , and MAPK protein expression compared to the group administered with distilled water. However, these effects were not confirmed in the PI-degraded preparation administration group. Conclusion: The results suggested that learning ability and memory in rats were enhanced by PI 50 administration, which may be due to the action of the PI within PI 50. In the future, it will be necessary to study the preventive and ameliorating effects of PI 50 in cognitive diseases.

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