There is an increasing demand for tasty, healthy food offering the consumer both nutritional and sensory value . Central is the fact that the innovation chain has been reversed: from the wishes of the consumer, product and ingredients are investigated, and from the product and ingredient requirements, the production process (chain) is studied. The major research aims are understanding consumer perceptions, the structure-function relationships of the different food components/ingredients, and the interactions between food components during processing.
This research area is sub-divided into two themes:
B1 - Sensory perceived properties of foods
The perceptions of taste, smell and oral texture in relation to product texture and composition are studied to understand the relationships between the consumer's behaviour and the characteristics of a product. Consequently, the interaction between volatile and non-volatiles components will also be studied.
B2 - New ingredient functionality
Via research directed towards understanding the structure-function relationships of food ingredients, the discovery and optimalization of both the nutritional/physiological functionality of ingredients and their physical-chemical properties will be explored at the molecular, mesoscopic and macroscopic levels. Research is directed towards the functionality of ingredients in the complex matrix of food during production and consumption. High- throughput experimentation and analytical methods will be used to investigate the influence of processing conditions and the influence of the food matrix.
Major local or national research programmes fund several research projects under this research area, for example: