Food & Health Network Brief
Welcome to F&HN Brief. In this issue we report latest
news from F&HN, the Clusters and from IFR. We also describe developments in
how F&HN is being managed for members.
Cross-Cluster Meeting
We hope you’ll agree that, to help develop our two-way
dialogue, for us to better understand how to facilitate F&HN and maximise
the benefits for you, it would be useful to meet together annually. We hope
that industry members of our Governing Body, and senior IFR staff responsible
for science direction, will be able to attend. The proposal is to have a
meeting on 23rd June. Please contact catherine.reynolds@bbsrc.ac.uk
as soon as possible – to let her know whether you are (a) interested in the
concept (and, if so, whether there are any particular issues you would like us
to address (b) free to come on the day and (c) whether you would prefer a
meeting in Norwich, London or elsewhere.
Did you know?
Carbohydrates can make you fat by shutting down your fat-burning metabolism
Richard Faulks is arranging a meeting at IFR on April 21st to discuss
the state of knowledge on carbohydrates, which will help you appreciate the
extent to which we could all benefit from eating low glycaemic-index foods. Further information
at: http://www.foodandhealthnetwork.com/
in the Members Area.
Talks are ‘Modeling the Glycaemic Response’ (Jack Dainty),
‘Glycaemic Index’ (Geoff Livesey – Consultant, formerly IFR), ‘Carbohydrates
and Large Bowel Health’ (Ian Johnson) and ‘Carbohydrates as Prebiotics’ (Jenny
Gee).
If you are interested in the topic, but not a member of the Food &
Nutrition Cluster, or know of any industry/trade association or similar, non-members
of F&HN, who might be interested in attending please let us know, as we can
make places available at a reasonable, one-off fee which can be offset if the organisation
joins the Cluster, or the F&HN.
More Cluster activity
Predictive Microbiology & Risk Analysis
Members have recently had a ‘Science Special’ update at IFR.
Next meetings are scheduled for: Melton Mowbray on 19 July 2004, Thursday 11 November 2004 at IFR,
and Wednesday 9 March 2005, possibly
in Nottingham. Please contact tim.brocklehurst@bbsrc.ac.uk for
information.
Predicting bacterial response
The simple statistical picture presented by disease rates
within a community is only part of the food poisoning story; in practice, a
strong interplay between consumers, the environment and food is constantly at
work. It is just as important to understand the network of the complex
interactions between people and food, or dependencies, as it is to quantify
individual cause and effects for particular foodborne bacteria.
We have developed a FSA-funded software package - Growth
Predictor - to predict microbial growth in food environments; this is freely
available to encourage industry use, and supersedes the commercial Food
MicroModel. This and other successful downloads are all based on the
mathematical model of bacterial growth developed at IFR during the 90’s. They
are also linked to ComBase, the most significant international collaborative
project in predictive microbiology. The ComBase (combined database on microbial
responses to the food environment) initiative has received great interest
worldwide, with the IFR scientists who developed its computational and
mathematical basis giving several international workshops on its use.
Weblinks:
Barriers
The scheduled date of the next meeting is May 5th 2004. The barriers cluster is currently focused on
moisture migration in complex food materials, because of its effect on quality
and shelf life. We are carrying out research on the determination of moisture
distribution and migration in complex foods, and are seeking to develop
research on the fabrication of barriers to control migration. We welcome
further participation in the development of this area of research – please
contact steve.ring@bbsrc.ac.uk to
learn more.
Shelf-life Extension
Two meetings are in the planning stage. The first meeting is on Imaging techniques of use in solving shelf-life problems. Contact david.hibberd@bbsrc.ac.uk for
further information.
Waste Utilisation
The TotalFood 2004 conference takes place at IFR on 25th-28th April 2004. If you’ve not
already registered please visit the website, check out the programme and make
your booking.
Weblink at: www.totalfood2004.com
Contact keith.waldron@bbsrc.ac.uk
for further information.
Facilitating the F&HN – Message from Acting Director, Prof. Mike Gasson
“Recent staff changes have prompted some thought about how best to build
on the foundation that is in place, and we have
asked the Communications Group to take responsibility for F&HN. This reflects the fact that F&HN has a strong Knowledge Transfer (KT) element, and a more general move to build bigger, coherent activity units within our Support team.
F&HN is dependent on the efforts of
a group of Cluster Co-ordinators, currently Tim Brocklehurst, Richard Faulks,
David Hibberd, Steve Ring and Keith Waldron. Cluster Co-ordinators will
continue to be essential to the future success of F&HN.
There will be changes in the way that F&HN is positioned; we hope to bring the activity much closer to the
science base and build a clearer connection to the science Themes. New
publicity material will be available shortly.”
Supporting the F&HN
From the Communications Group
The Knowledge & Society Team, led by experienced PR
practitioner and science writer Jo Belsten will manage F&HN. Team members are
Dawn Barrett (who leads on event management for IFR), Webmaster and database
expert Andy Walker, and IFR’s Graphics & Photography Coordinator, Paul
Pople. Secretarial support comes from new appointee, part-timer Lesley Swift. They
are advised by Catherine Reynolds, Head of Communications and, in addition we are
integrating the efforts of Norwich Research Park-based Consultant Kevan
Williams, from IdiomPlus http://www.idiomplus.com/index.html
, who is working hard on the industry interface. Contact information is on this
Brief and on the website; individual roles will develop as time goes on, but in
the short term feel free to contact any of the team for information.
From the Members
Please give us feedback about what you want us to provide and how you
want it provided! If you have a burning question, do please ask – we may not
know the answer and, you never know, it might lead to a new Cluster or a project
proposal to assist your continuing business success.
From the Governing Body
Industry members of our Governing Body in particular, are looking
forward to helping the F&HN develop. We’re planning to discuss F&HN with them shortly, and will give you
feedback on their views.
Weblink to Governing Body: http://www.ifr.ac.uk/about/GoverningBody.html
Contacts in Communications Group
Membership; event
organisation
Website; newsletters
Strategic issues
News from IFR
IFR News published
Go to http://www.ifr.ac.uk/publications/
to read edition 1 of 2004. If you wish to receive a professionally printed copy
please let us know at enquiries@foodandhealthnetwork.com
Allergy update
IFR coordinates an EU-funded project to promote the
provision of visible, credible food allergy information sources to a wide variety
of stakeholders, including general consumers, the agro-food industry (including
primary producers, manufacturers and retailers), allergic consumers, health
professionals and regulators. The Informall allergy ‘jump station’ (a
collection of critically assessed web resources) has just been launched and
will become a valuable tool for the identification of quality information
covering food allergy.
Weblink to jump station: http://www.ifr.ac.uk/allergy_js/
Food & Health Network
Institute of Food Research
Norwich Research Park
Colney
Norwich NR4 7UA UK
E-mail: enquiries@foodandhealthnetwork.com
Tel: +44 (0)1603 255000
Fax: +44 (0)1603 255168
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