EU Funding

Following my meetings with Nottingham City Council, we are looking at future calls and tenders.

Future themes and challenges

Here are my thoughts on future themes, concerns, research areas or developments important to food science and human nutrition:

1. Fortification of food: Should the state intervene by recommending the fortifications of food for public health, for example folic acid?

2. Functional foods: Foods high in phytochemicals and other nutrients which are increasingly being seen as beneficial often attract a premium price and some claims which may be ambitious. The science is needed to back up these claims, studies done on humans.

3. Additional uses: The food industry is crossing boundaries to now have nutrients for example in cosmetics or medical procedures.

4. Self regulation vs state regulation: Product reformulation consumer driven by economics or regulated by the state, for example salt content.

5. Food deserts: Certain cohorts are excluded from fresh fruit and vegetables due to low car ownership, poor public transport and location top shopping areas and markets which increasingly are in more affluent areas.

6. School meals and education: This dichotomy is key to reducing rates of obesity and diabetes. Children and young adults must be fed a healthy and sustainable diet at school and college and be taught the basics of nutrition such as reading food labels, what is fat, how to shop and how to put a meal together.

7. Media and Science: Generally the public’s perception and understanding of Science is low. The overall message of health and nutrition is lost by continual scare stories and bad Science.

PEPSICO

Case Study

PepsiCo Health Report 2010

Graham Basten (GB*) from De Montfort University (DMU) participated in the creation of the PepsiCo Health Report hosted by C3 and Oxford HealthCare Alliance. The report sought to expand on self regulation of the company through product reformulation and sustainability. With the exception of the University of Reading, GB was the only other representative from academia. The series of events highlighted and frame worked discussions which were highly relevant given the new Secretary for Health’s (Andrew Lansley MP) policy statements on the regulation of the food industry.

*GB holds a PhD from the UK government’s Institute of Food Research and clinical nutrition research experience at the Medical Schools of the Universities of Nottingham and Sheffield, with the latter being funded by the Food Standards Agency. Much of this work was reducing risk of heart disease and cardiovascular disease, one of the Department of Health’s top 5 priorities.

AMR Grant

We have just submitted a research grant to look at sickle cell and diet to the AMR charity.

Hope PhD

We have submitted a PhD application looking at early stage markers for colon cancer to the HOPE charity.

DMU Research Advisory Groups: Longlife Health and Wellbeing

I am a member of the DMU Grand Challenges Research Advisory Groups: Longlife Health and Wellbeing.

CURRENT RESEARCH: Prior to joining DMU in 2007 I enjoyed over ten years post-doctoral research at the UK Government’s Institute of Food Research, The University of Sheffield and Nottingham Medical Schools and co-authoring over £1.5 million research grants. My research expertise spans from the molecular biology, to the food and nutrition, to the community in which people live, to the policy which governs these. All the Grand Challenge statements identified above will be served by these research activities

DMU RIF: In collaboration with Oscar (3^rd Sector East Midlands Charity) / Action Medical Research/ NHS to investigate molecular, nutrition and social solutions to sickle cell disease using novel research techniques. DMU RIF: In collaboration with Faculty of Art and Design, IESD and NHS to investigate the effect of the built environment of health and wellness. Pepsi Co: Working on their wellness programme by reformulating products to contain less sugar and salt. One Nottingham / Nottingham City Council / Marmot to investigate how social housing, school meals and nutrition effects social aspiration, health and wellness. HOPE Cancer Charity application to study the effect of food in Leicestershire and Rutland on cancer risk using novel techniques Trial manager for UK Food Standards Agency / World Cancer Research Fund previous work to study the effect of nutrition of cancer and heart disease in large multicentre human intervention studies. FreshGrow are a major East Midland’s vegetable grower with whom I have links and projects with and help to link the food at source to our molecular work. University of Leeds collaboration to measure photochemical activity in ethnic foods in Leicester

BENEFIT FROM NETWORK: Networking and collaborative opportunities; Access to review documents, grant calls, support network; Bring my research knowledge and expertise to the network; Shape DMU research policy and apply to School as I am Associate Head of School

Interests: Factors that influence health and wellbeing; Effective quality of life interventions Improving quality of life at all levels; Informing policy and practice

Marmot Review

Dear Stakeholder,

Last week, Professor Sir Michael Marmot was appointed President of the British Medical Association (BMA). His term will run from June 2010 to June 2011. In this role he will continue to champion tackling health inequalities through the social determinants with particular emphasis on developing the role of the workforce in reducing health inequalities.

Appearing on a number of BBC programmes on Friday morning, Professor Marmot responded to the National Audit Office's report on health inequalities (which was published last week) explaining why health inequalities are not narrowing. Listen to Michael's interview with the BBC Today programme here .

The new website is now online and can be found at www.marmotreview.org . Here you will find all the information previously available on the old websites, as well as pages about our present and past activities and events, press releases, and news coverage. Presentations from the launch conference are available on the website, and graphs from the report can be found on the Presentations page as well. There is also a section on the European Review, still in its early stages.

The website should enable us to more easily interact with stakeholders and anyone else interested in the issue of health inequalities. We would like to hear from you about any interventions, activities or strategies you are implementing locally, and how they are going. This will help us to develop more of an idea of what works.

We would be grateful if you could forward this information to interested colleagues and relevant networks.

Kind Regards,

Ellen

Ellen Bloomer

Research Fellow

The Marmot Review

Health and Wellness Conference

I attended great conference today should you need any info let me know.