The occurrence of deoxynivalenol (DON) in retail foods in Tehran (Iran) was determined using high-performance liquid chromatography technique and immunoaffinity column as the clean-up step. A method was validated for analysis of DON in rice, bread, puffed corn snack and wheat flour. The average recoveries and precision (RSD) for DON in different foods ranged 84.2-93.1% and 2.9-12.0%, respectively. A survey of DON was performed on the 72 samples of rice, bread, puffed corn snack, and wheat flour collected from Tehran retail market. The data showed that 10 samples (13.9%) out of 72 samples were contaminated with DON with the maximum level of 368.7 ng/g. The samples had contamination level lower than the maximum tolerated level of DON in foods in Iran. The total intake of DON was under the provisional maximum tolerable daily intake set for DON by the JECFA.

Dear Editor: Today, antibiotics are used in the farm animal with the aim of treatment of infections, prevention of diseases and growth promotion. Due to several reasons including ignorance of withdrawal periods of antibiotics, use of extra label dosage for animals, animal feed contamination with the excretion of treated animals and use of prohibited antibiotics (1), residues may found in foodstuffs of animal origin such as meat, milk, honey and eggs.....

Objective: The present study aimed to determine the effects of diet of negative calorie foods (NCF) on weight, atherogenic lipids, and atherogenic ratio and compare its efficiency with diet of low calorie foods (LCF). Materials and Methods: In this randomized clinical trial, the participants were randomly selected from inactive overweight females (age 45-75 years) by parallel assignment were distributed randomly into two groups: NCF group that received a highcarbohydrate (75%), and low-fat (10%) diet, and LCF group had a dietary recipe with 55% of carbohydrate and a little fat (30%) content. Both groups had a healthy calorie restriction (15%) from their daily caloric requirements within three months. Evaluation of body weight, atherogenic lipids (total-C, HDL-C and LDL-C), and atherogenic ratio (total-C to HDL-C) were performed pre-and postintervention for all subjects and compared to each other. Results: The results of the within-group comparison of NCF and LCF on weight (respectively, P-value= 0. 04; P-value= 0. 03), total-C (respectively, P-value= 0. 02; P-value= 0. 03), HDL-C (respectively, P-value= 0. 04; P-value= 0. 01) and LDL-C (respectively, P-value= 0. 01; P-value= 0. 03) revealed significant effects. Also, significant differences were observed between groups in atherogenic lipid profile, total-C (P-value: 0. 03), HDL-C (P-value: 0. 001), and LDL-C (P-value: 0. 03). The result of the between-group comparison was also significant in atherogenic ratio (P-value: 0. 04). Conclusion: Contrary to expectation, dietary regimen demonstrated a similar pattern of weight loss in females. The NCF when compared to the LCF, is not a healthy choice for weight loss in sedentary females with overweight.