INFOGEST Digestie alternatieve eiwitten (KB-15-001-002)

The main objective of the Action is to build an open European network of leading institutes undertaking basic research on different aspects of food protein digestion. The Action will therefore gather scientists from different origins (food scientists, gut physiologists, nutritionists, etc.) whose complementarities will be unique and essential for addressing all the aspects of this multidisciplinary topic. Although the role of digestion of food in providing beneficial food components to the body and improving its health is currently a very hot topic, the European scientific community suffers a lack of organization and communication (no dedicated international conference, two journals only recently launched). The Action will therefore give, at the perfect time, opportunities to scientists of the field to share and implement their respective knowledge.

Regular meetings via ‘modern media’ will be held; regular plenary progress meetings will be organized.

The COST-action is organized around the 3 expertise areas (food structure, digestion models, health effects).

In March 2014, the 3^rd International Conference on Food Digestion has been organised in Wageningen.

An e-book will be published on the basics of in vitro-methods to estimate health effects, intended as a method to facilitate access to such techniques for relative newcomers in the field (publisher: Springer).

INFOGEST will improve:

• our basic knowledge on protein digestion mechanisms and dissemination to the wider scientific community
• the development of relevant in vitro, in silico and in vivo digestion models for a better assessment of food digestibility in human
• methods that aimed at predicting the effect of specific food products on targeted populations
• our understanding of the influence of food structure, food matrix and food (bio)processing on digestion for controlling the release of bioactive components in the gut
• lifelong health and wellbeing of the EU population through delivery of targeted nutrition
• an estimate of the health impact of ‘novel food proteins’
• dissemination of knowledge to dieticians for their diet formulation
• the building of a European core of the leading institutes on the topic to develop more focused research projects with improved possibilities of delivering successful outcomes which can apply for future EU-funding
• dissemination of knowledge to the European food industry helping them to develop new functional foods with strong scientific evidences
• establishment of new collaborations, exchange of know-how and expertise between involved partner institutions and strengthen already existing collaborations
• training and education of young European scientist specializing in food science, food immunology and food chemistry

The action will contribute to provide Dutch food industry with tools to analyse gut health impact of their product range, and Dutch food industry with physiologically relevant assays.