The present disclosure is directed to a method for reducing immunoreactivity of a food including (a) incubating a food that contains at least one protein with a cross-linking enzyme to form a food that includes at least one cross-linked protein; and (b) fermenting the food including the at least one cross-linked protein with a microorganism to form a modified food including a hydrolysate of the at least one cross-linked protein, wherein (a) is performed before (b) and wherein a level of immunoreactivity of the modified food is less than a level of immunoreactivity of an unmodified food including at least one protein. Modified foods obtained from the present method are also provided.

The present invention provides a method of controlling growth of unwanted microorganisms by limiting their access to manganese. More specifically, the present invention provides a method of inhibiting or delaying growth of yeast and mold by reducing the manganese concentration in a product which is preferably a food product. The invention also provides manganese scavengers and uses thereof to inhibit or delay fungal growth.

An object of the present invention is to provide a method for efficiently obtaining a lactic acid bacterium that is made to contain a large amount of double-stranded RNA; and a lactic acid bacterium having a high double-stranded RNA content obtained by the method. The object is achieved by: (1) a method for producing a double-stranded RNA-containing lactic acid bacterium, including a step of culturing a lactic acid bacterium under at least one condition of an aeration condition and a low-temperature condition lower than an optimum temperature, thereby obtaining the double-stranded RNA-containing lactic acid bacterium; (2) a double-stranded RNA-containing lactic acid bacterium, in which the content of double-stranded RNA is 2.0 times or more as compared with the content of double-stranded RNA when a bacterium of the same strain is cultured for the same culture time under an optimum temperature and non-aeration condition; or the like.