New Danish-Californian consortium to develop healthier foods - 18.01.2009

Faculty of Life Sciences in transatlantic collaboration that will fight malnutrition and lifestyle diseases

 

How can we develop foods with best possible health impact?

 

A new Transatlantic Foods for Health Consortium will seek to answer this question. The first steps towards creating the consortium were taken as leading food scientists from Denmark and California met at the UC Davis Centennial Symposia “Foods for Health in the 21^st Century: A Roadmap for the Future.”

 

It is the first time that the UC system, led by the Foods for Health Institute at UC Davis, has entered a broad alliance with four Danish universities coordinated through the Centre for Advanced Food Studies in Denmark.

 

Head of the Foods for Health Institute at UC Davis is Dr. M.R.C. Greenwood, who served as Associate Director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in support of President Bill Clinton. She describes the historic agreement as an important step in the fight against malnutrition and lifestyle diseases.

 

"This is not about just adding more Vitamin A to carrots. We have to develop novel foods for important needs. Often, consumers have to pay up to twenty times more for 1.000 healthy calories in fruit and vegetables than they would pay for a 1.000 unhealthy calories in for example fast food. We have to look at how we get more healthy properties into food that is safe, convenient and economically accessible."

 

Helge Sander, the Danish Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation stresses Denmark’s position in the development of food science.
“We have strong traditions within this field. I hope the food consortium will help further important research, enhance international collaboration while also becoming a role model for new transatlantic initiatives in the future.”

 

Professor in Food Chemistry at UC Davis, Bruce German, calls the collaboration with Denmark a clear-cut win-win.

"This alliance truly exemplifies how the "foods for health" concept comes together. Danes have led the way in scientific research in food analysis and food processing, while our competencies here at Davis focus on how specific foods and diets affect our health. Combining the two knowledge areas creates an enormous synergy effect."

 

Dr. M.R.C. Greenwood points out the fact that Denmark has seen the development in obesity stagnate in recent years.

"Are Danes more sensible about their diet? Is the population more homogeneous or more active - or are they just ten years behind us? These are essential questions that we will shed light on. Important tools in this context are Denmark's incredible public health statistics, which are more comprehensive that any we have ever produced in the US."

Dr. M.R.C. Greenwood also mentions the food industry as a crucial partner.
"The consortium will be an important lever in creating co-operations with the food industry in order to produce more foods that fulfill nutritional guidelines."

 

The Danish participation in the consortium will be coordinated through The Centre for Advanced Food Studies where Dr. Alan Friis, the chairman of the Executive Committee, also views the consortium as a unique possibility to get Danish research in contact with foreign companies.

 

”Danish food research is in many ways on its way to become more international. The consortium will provide us with a fantastic new platform benefitting our Danish industry partners with whom we already have a great collaboration.”

 

The consortium is a concrete result of a long time relationship between UC Davis and Innovation Center Denmark in Silicon Valley. Technology and Research Attaché at the center, Lars Beer Nielsen, can now see a dream come true.

 

”This is the first time ever that such a strong research alliance has been established between Danish and UC universities. Now, we need to take this to the next level. I hope we can establish a joint Danish-UC research school for PhD´s in foods and health”.

At the Centennial Symposia, the researchers from Denmark and California initiated the joint research projects. One of the Danish project participants is Professor Anne Meyer from The Technical University of Denmark, Chemical Engineering. She works with technologies for producing dietary fibers and natural antioxidants from biomass. The fibers have a beneficial effect on the intestinal flora and are to be used as functional, health promoting ingredients in foods.

”The goal is to discover how specific compositions of fiber and natural antioxidants affects the immune system and can assist in preventing for example cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. It is a new research field where we today know very little about what exactly happens at the molecular level in the body. In Denmark, we have not had a tradition of linking food and medical research in this way, so the consortium is really an example on how 1 plus 1 equals more than 2.”

The consortium will also include other researchers in the UC system, among others UCLA. The university has one of the United States’ most recognized obesity researchers, Dr. David Heber, who is looking forward to a closer cooperation with Arne Astrup, Head of the Institute for Human Nutrition at the Faculty of Life Sciences at Copenhagen University. The Danish Professor’s research in how protein rich diets can lead to weight loss is of particular interest to the American obesity researcher, who will test Astrup’s research in his weight loss clinics.

”We are also interested in Dr. Astrup’s supermarket concept, where consumers via barcodes on products can be told whether they meet their nutritional goals. I'm going to contact local sponsors to see if we can implement this idea over here."

 

Arne Astrup views the consortium as an important tool in developing functional foods that combine the knowledge about ingredients in which Denmark and California each are leading the way.

”Our stronghold is within the development of healthy dairy products, whereas California’s research focus has been on the products that they widely export, such as pomegranates, almonds, and olive oil. Most overweight is created by ingesting just 100 calories too much a day. It is possible to reverse this trend by developing foods that provide a greater feeling of satiety and increase the metabolism, while also preventing the fat from being absorbed in the body.”

 

Peter Olesen is Chairman of the Danish Council for Strategic Research, sponsoring the Danish delegation. He predicts that the consortium will assist in providing a more holistic view on the development of healthy foods.

Contact info:

M.R.C. Greenwood, director Foods for Health Institute, UC Davis.
Telephone: +1.530.754.4365. Email:

Bruce German, Food Chemist, Department of Food Science and Technology.
Telephone: +1.530.752.1486. Email:

David Heber, M.D., UCLA Center for Human Nutrition.
Telephone: +1.310.206.1987. Email:

For contact to Danish participants:

 

Lars Beer Nielsen, Technology & Research Attache Innovation Center Denmark.
Telephone: +1 650.215.8022. Email:

 

Facts:

 

The new Danish-Californian food consortium

A steering committee with representatives from both Denmark and California is now about to develop a road map, that will point out the most important research potentials and also investigate how the available R&D resources may be combined. In the spring, a whitepaper for publication in New York Academy of Sciences is to present the research areas and also bring political recommendations for the focus areas in the correlation between health, obesity, and foods.

The consortium will also include exchange students and an Entrepreneurship Academy with focus on bringing ideas to market within the food area.

The consortium will initially be funded through UC Davis and the Center for Advanced Food Studies. Also, the consortium plans to apply for EU funding and financial support from Danish and Californian foundations and councils.

Obesity in Denmark and the US

34 percent of the US population is suffering from obesity (defined as a Body Mass Index more than 30), whereas the Danish percentage is 16. The US has more than ten times extremely obese people (a BMI of more than 40) than Denmark. While the development of obesity has stagnated in Denmark, the same is not the case in the United States. Here, 86 percent of the American population will be overweight or obese in 2030, if the tide is not turned. Furthermore, this will result in every sixth dollar in the US health care system being spent on treatments with a direct correlation to overweight and obesity in 2030.

 

Danish-Californian research projects:

Macronutrients role in the development of new fat cells

At the Symposia, Danish research showed how the content of protein and carbohydrates impacts the effect of polyunsaturated fatty acids and how a protein rich diet prevents the development of fat induced obesity. This research has lead to a joint project with Professor Dr. John W. Newman, Western Human Nutrition Research Center, UC Davis. The project will investigate how the diet’s content of the so called macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat) affects the amount and the type of fat in blood and adipose tissue, and how this impacts the function and development of new fat cells. The collaboration will include experiments at the Western Human Nutrition Research Center and the University of Copenhagen.

 

Metabolism of fatty acids in single immune cells

Absorption and metabolism of different fatty acids are of great importance to the development and function of the immune cells. At UC Davis, cardiologist John Rutledge and physicist Thomas Huser have developed a method that makes it possible to follow these processes in a living immune cell. In a collaboration between UC Davis, the University of Copenhagen, and the Technical University of Denmark this method is going to be used to gain a better insight into how the different fatty acids affect one type of immune cells (monocytes) that are very important for the development of hardening of the arteries. Among other things, the results may be used to enhance the understanding of how the different types of fat in the diet have different effects on the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases.

 

Disease preventing antioxidants
New results from UC Davis show that natural antioxidants from wine and grape shells prevent disease because of complex mechanisms that extend beyond their effect as antioxidants. This knowledge is now to be used in a project where UC Davis, the University of Aarhus, and the Technical University of Denmark together will investigate specific antioxidant structures in a pig model.