1st Congress on Food Structure Design to be held in Portugal

The 1st Congress on Food Structure Design will take place in Porto, Portugal, from 15-17 October. Organised in the framework of the EU-funded COST Action FA1001, the goal of the event is to strengthen the scientific understanding of product design and engineering and stimulate the development of innovative, complex and highly structured products and suitable production processes.

The food industry is constantly challenged to meet consumer demands for new food products. An understanding of fundamental structure and function relationships of food components is a key to the design of new foods; ingredient formulation and production processes have a major role in commercial food product development, but their impact on food structure at different size scale is poorly understood. Moreover, the influence of structure and physical properties on nutritional and health-inducing properties of foods (eg, bioavailability/efficacy of nutrients/bioactives) has received fragmented research over the last decade.

The main topic of the congress is therefore the design of health-supporting food functions with the aim of developing food structure/health benefits relationships in complex real multiphase structured foods with optimal sensory quality. Knowledge aimed at underpinning the understanding of the role of biomolecules in food structuring and their impact on health and quality will be also included.

The conference will gather an interdisciplinary team of scientists from different research areas (food engineering, biophysics, applied soft matter, food technology, applied human nutrition, creative design) in the frame of an integrated process and product design approach for creating innovative multiphase structured foods. The congress will be developed on three directions of food structure design:

• Engineering of structures for tailored delivery of health-related functionalities.
• Process and product engineering for food properties generation/preservation/delivery.
• Sharing knowledge and technologies between academia and industry for healthy foods design.

Abstract submission is now open and will close on 19 May 2014. Other details regarding the congress are available at http://www.skyros-congressos.pt/foodstructure/.