What are functional foods, what is their importance for health and how science can contribute were some of the topics addressed by Ana Maria Gomes, professor at the Faculty of Biotechnology and researcher at the Centre for Biotechnology and Fine Chemistry at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in yet another session of the Conversation Cycle “Feeding a cause.”
Identified as a basic need, food and the way we eat it has a major impact on health. An unregulated diet, whether by deficit or excess, can, as a consequence, lead to the appearance of a disease. “To face this challenge, it is necessary to look at food, not only as something that has a nutritional function, but also as elements capable of preventing nutrition-related diseases,” said Ana Maria Gomes, a researcher who has been working on the development and characterization of functional foods. In this sense, the researcher asked “It is up to science to be able to respond to the challenge of producing more and better food for the well-being and health of populations, but how?”
In this session, some of the examples that the Centre for Biotechnology and Fine Chemistry (CBQF/ESB/UCP) has been studying in this field were presented and discussed, from improving the nutritional quality of foods by reducing salt, added sugars or saturated fats and trans, optimizing fortification with micronutrients for adequate nutrition, formulating new functional foods with a focus on promoting health through the addition of beneficial ingredients (probiotics, prebiotics, plant sterols, omega-3, among others) or improving the quality of life for citizens with specific dietary needs with the development of targeted modified foods (eg foods for lactose intolerants).
The session “Functionalization of food and health”, which forms part of the Cycle of Conversations “Feeding a Cause”, an initiative promoted by the Serralves Foundation, in a scientific partnership with the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto, took place on July 16, in the Sala Panoramic view of Quinta do Parque de Serralves.
