US-Danish alliance in search of healthier foods

The Transatlantic Foods for Health project is a collaboration between scientists at the University of California, Davis, and four Danish Universities, intended to draw on the two nations’ complementary areas of food research expertise.

The plan is to develop healthier foods and foods with added health benefits through a combination of different research approaches.

One of the program participants is associate professor and lipidologist Lars Hellgren of the Department for Systems Biology at the Technical University of Denmark. He told FoodNavigator-USA.com: “While we in Denmark are very strong on general and technological issues, our colleagues in California are strong on the medical, clinical side. Combining the two together creates an enormous synergy.”​

Health benefits​

Part of the group’s research is expected to focus on ingredients said to produce specific health benefits, such as the effects of fibers and antioxidants produced from biomass on gut flora, and to examine their effects on a molecular level.

Other areas which are expected to be put under the spotlight include ingredients’ effects on the immune system and cardiovascular health, as well as those that help weight loss or prevent weight gain. In this area, the group says it will be looking at ways ingredients can improve satiety, speed metabolism or reduce the amount of fat that is absorbed from foods by the body.

“It is partly about single ingredients but it’s also about combining ingredients in the right way,”​ said Hellgren. “I’m interested in fatty acids. The benefits of fatty acids and omega-3 in particular are very well documented, but there is still an issue about how we get it into the food and finding the best formulation.”​

He said that although the food industry is not formally involved with the project, both the Danish researchers and Americans “have very strong links with the food industry”​ in their respective countries.

Nutritional accessibility​

Apart from researching ingredients that could help deal with weight-related illnesses, the project also aims to tackle issues of malnutrition.

UC Davis nutrition professor and director of the Foods for Health Institute M.R.C. Greenwood said: “This is not about just adding more vitamin A to carrots… Often, consumers have to pay up to 20 times more for 1,000 healthy calories in fruit and vegetables than they would pay for 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.”​

Greenwood also underlined the importance of continuing to work together with the food industry in order to produce more foods that fit with nutritional guidelines.