Designing superior foods

A UK food and material science expert has been awarded a Visiting Fellowship with the Food Futures Flagship, to help design healthier and tastier foods.

Prof Peter Lillford holds the position of Visiting Professor for the Public Awareness of Science at the University of York in the United Kingdom. His work with the Flagship will focus on understanding the structure and properties of foods and how to design foods with specific health benefits.

"The challenge is to understand how popular foods deliver their taste and health benefits, and how these can be maintained while modifying the nutrients," Lillford said.

"Using new formulations and processes, we can redesign high-energy foods, such as bakery, meat and dairy products, to have lower calorie content yet the same consumer appeal and the desired textures, tastes and flavours.

"This also provides the opportunity to reformulate foods and ingredients to deliver controlled release of nutrients into the digestive tract and avoid, for example, an unnecessarily high loading of fat and carbohydrate, which can stress the digestive system."

The development of controlled calorie release foods could slow the increasing incidence of diet-related disease and obesity.

"The research expertise available in Australia and the integration of capabilities across CSIRO and the Food Futures Flagship provide the right combination of skills to tackle the challenge of designing healthier foods," said Lillford.

"This has the potential to make the rest of the world's scientists and technologists sit up and take notice."