What should food of the future be like?

From left to right: Montserrat Rivero (ACCA); Luis Moreno (SEÑ); Carmen Vidal (UB-SEÑ); Ramón Estruch (UB-SEÑ) and Oriol Comas (representative of the 5th Meeting of Young Researchers).
From left to right: Montserrat Rivero (ACCA); Luis Moreno (SEÑ); Carmen Vidal (UB-SEÑ); Ramón Estruch (UB-SEÑ) and Oriol Comas (representative of the 5th Meeting of Young Researchers).
Research
(28/06/2018)

The 17th Conference of the Spanish Society of Nutrition (SEN) will take place this week at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB until June 29 and which will gather around three hundred experts on nutrition. With the motto “Alimentació 5S”, the conference wants to make visible the five key elements that represent the complexity and transversality of the current nutrition and the future one: healthy, safe, satisfying, sustainable and social.

From left to right: Montserrat Rivero (ACCA); Luis Moreno (SEÑ); Carmen Vidal (UB-SEÑ); Ramón Estruch (UB-SEÑ) and Oriol Comas (representative of the 5th Meeting of Young Researchers).
From left to right: Montserrat Rivero (ACCA); Luis Moreno (SEÑ); Carmen Vidal (UB-SEÑ); Ramón Estruch (UB-SEÑ) and Oriol Comas (representative of the 5th Meeting of Young Researchers).
Research
28/06/2018

The 17th Conference of the Spanish Society of Nutrition (SEN) will take place this week at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB until June 29 and which will gather around three hundred experts on nutrition. With the motto “Alimentació 5S”, the conference wants to make visible the five key elements that represent the complexity and transversality of the current nutrition and the future one: healthy, safe, satisfying, sustainable and social.

Co-organized by the UB and the Food and Nutrition Torribera Campus, this scientific meeting includes for the first time the 10th Session of Associació de Ciències de lʼAlimentació (ACCA). On Friday, June 29, there will be a homage to Abel Mariné, emeritus professor of Bromatology of the UB.

Regarding the motto of this edition, the conference has several roundtables and lectures to treat these issues. Regarding healthy nutrition, there will be important contributions to know about the relation between food and health. On safety, activities will treat the relation of climate change with challenges to continue guaranteeing the safest nutrition in history. Regarding sustainability, they will provide added value to the Mediterranean diet, as well as the challenge of avoiding wasting food for a growing population at a global scale. From the social perspective, they will debate on the behaviour and reactions to a food alert. Regarding satisfying food they will present the challenge of improving food diets at hospitals.

M. Carmen Vidal, vice-dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences and president of the Organizing Committee of the 17th SEN Conference, highlighted that during the last years, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned about working to change production systems in horizon 2050, “since with the predictable demographical increase we could not feed all population with the current production systems”. Therefore, sustainable food is becoming interesting. According to the expert, “it is very important to treat this from the perspective of food production and the view of sustainability in the planet so as to not run out of resources”.

Vidal thinks “We are at the moment with the highest amount of food compared to other periods in history, but we are also facing the highest amount of food waste. We have to be aware that people throw away a very important amount of food, sometimes up to the 50 %, both in Spain and worldwide”.

Luis Moreno, president of the Spanish Spciety of Nutrition (SEN) said a great part of the population is aware that lifestyles have an impact on the quality of life, “especially nutrition, which plays a key role”.

Key factors for a healthy lifestyle

Then, Doctor Ramón Estruch, vice-president of the Organizing Committee of the 17th SEN Conference and lecturer at the Department of Medicine, says a healthy lifestyle should include five factors: promotion of a healthy and safe nutrition, such as the Mediterranean diet; keeping a moderate consumption of alcoholic drinks, mainly regarding wine and beer, always with food; keeping a regular body weight, avoiding obesity; practising physical activity regularly (more than thirty minutes a day)and last, avoiding toxic habits, such as smoking.

Doctor Estruch noted that “the Administration should provide more resources to the promotion of a healthy and safe lifestyle, like the Mediterranean diet. This would involve schools, industries, shops and factories (occupational medicine units), as well as health centers, to treat all segments of the population”.

Montserrat Rivero, president of the Catalan Association of Food Sciences, highlights the participation of the industry in the session, a key piece, “since it is the one bringing the products that include innovation and he newest scientific knowledge to the market, which helps improving the health of the population”. Actually, during this scientific meeting, they dedicated some time to the industry, and other institutions, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Spanish Agency for Consumer Affairs, Food Safety and Nutrition, and the ministries of Health and Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food of Generalitat de Catalunya.

Meeting of Young Researchers at the Food and Nutrition Torribera Campus

The introduction to the SEN conference was the 5th Meeting of Young Researchers in the Food and Nutrition Torribera Campus (Santa Coloma de Gramenet) on June 26. More than forty young researchers from the field of nutrition and food sciences from around Spain attended the meeting. They showed the main lines of their research and their projects framed within the 5S nutrition.

The aim of the meeting was to promote a place to meet among young PhD students from the field of nutrition and food, aiming to value the quality of research.

Apart from SEN representatives, other participants in the meeting were the mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Núria Parlon; the dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, Jordi Camarasa, and the director of the Food and Nutrition Torribera Campus, Josep Boatella. The closing ceremony was held by the vice-rector of Entrepreneurship, Transfer and Innovation of the UB, Albert Cirera.