Food Matters Live 2016

Last week I headed on an early train Nottingham to St Pancras for a day at Food Matters Live – a huge UK food and nutrition conference which brings together industry, retailers, government and those working in nutrition for a 3 day event. There is a huge exhibition of organisations including food companies to universities; lots of speakers participating in seminars; plus networking opportunities with the range of visitors from backgrounds including food science manufacturing, R&D, marketing, retail, nutrition and public health.  I had been before and I was looking forward to it!

I first went to a seminar session on digestive health: ‘What is next for nutrition and digestive health?’ – a very interesting and relevant area. Dr Glenys Jones, the communications manager at the Association for Nutrition chaired the session and introduced the varied speakers. The first speaker was Eva Hudson, Global Head of Health and Wellness Rseaearch at Euromonitor International – she spoke about market insight and trends for gut health ingredients shaping the digestive health market which I found very interesting (clue – weetabix is the biggest selling digestive health product in the UK!). The second talk was Understanding the FODMAP concept presented by Dr Megan Rossi, She is a Research Associate at Kings College London. Her talk was great and very informative and well explained (it added to my own reading I have been doing on this topic). Professor Bob Rastall, professor of food Biotechnology at The University of Reading presented about the Latest insights into the effect of food and diet on gut microbiome. This involved some complex gut biochemistry pathways! The session was then finished by Dr Gwen Falony, scientist at VIB who explained some population-level analysis of gut microbiome and the studies they have been doing with fecal samples. More detail about the information from the talks to come in my next blog posts!

The second session I went to was about early years (an area of nutrition I love – my research project is about maternal nutrition – and a very important one to prevent problems later in life). ‘Maternal and infant nutrition: supporting good nutrition in early years’. This session was chaired by Professor Sarah Redsell, Professor of Public Health at Anglia Ruskin University and she introduced with Identifying obesity risk in infancy: the role of the health visitor. First Kim Roberts the Chief Executive on HENRY (Health, Exercise, Nutrition for the Really Young – what a great charity!) spoke about Making every contact count: working with health professionals to ensure families are given effective nutritional advice. Vicki Watson a specialist Public Health Dietitian from Nottingham City Care Partnership spoke about weaning ways: how to give families the best possible advice and support around complimentary feeding. She spoke about some of the great work that has been put into the communities here in Nottingham! Then the best practice in infant weaning was dicussed. Clare Basely, Registered Nutrition, CLB Nutrition Ltd and Ella’s Kitchen also spoke about weaning and she presented Improving babies’ long term food preferences by weaning with vegetables: a review of the latest evidence. (Use vegetables in weaning!). Katie Fordham (ANutr), the science and innovation senior manager at Danone Nutricia Early Life Nutrition thenexplained taste and texture in infant weaning: How weaning practice impacts on later eating habits. To finish Annie Denny the Nutrition Development Manager at the Early Years Nutrition Partnership spoke about delivering expert food and nutrition practice in early years settings. (A great job that the EYNP do) – Again more details to come in a future blog!

I then took my time walking around the exhibition (and trying many a sample of the products on show!). The exhibitors ranged from big food and drink manufacturers to new small start ups plus Universities and research bodies, retailers, ingredient suppliers and food service providers – all showing developments in food and drink innovation in ‘healthier’ ideas.

There was many a gluten/dairy free, vegetarian/vegan, ‘refined sugar free’ type of fruit/nut/seed bar this year …

In the afternoon I decided to go to some sessions in the conference theatre. Firstly ‘Food and Youth Matters’ where Prof. John Stein – Professor of Physiology at University of Oxford; Prof. Deborah Christie – Consultant clinical psychologist and Professor in paediatric and adolescent psychology; Emma Woolf – Author, writer, critic and journalist; and Marcus Butler – You Tube vlogger all pitched their views and then took part in a discussion with lots of questions from the audience.

I then stayed for the next conference session which was ‘The psychology of food choice: what shapes our food preferences’ (interestingly linked to my current ‘changing behaviours, promoting health module at uni’). Bee Wilson – Food writer and historian; Pierre Chandon – Director at INSEAD Sorbonne Behavioural Lab; Daniel Glaser – Neuroscientist and Director of Science Gallery, KCL; and Dr Rob Post – Senior Director of the Chobani Nutrition Center all shared their thoughts and opinions before answering questions from the audience and discussing their different view points.

A busy but great day in the nutrition world! I love going to conferences as I get to hear new and exciting things happening in nutrition, potential career areas and learn new things. It reinforces why I am so passionate about nutrition.

More blog posts to come with more about what was talked about in the presentations/discussions.

Waiting in kings cross for my train home meant for a Leon meal for dinner as a hot nourishing meal was what I needed to sustain my journey back. Food on the go doesn’t have to be unhealthy!

 

 

Science meets art – Volunteering with my digestion diagram at the S.T.E.A.M Big Draw.

Last Saturday as part of STEM outreach Nottingham (Student society dedicated to student led public engagement and outreach projects) I volunteered at Lakeside arts as part of The Big Draw 2016. The Big Draw is a country wide event and this years theme was S.T.E.A.M – Bringing together Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths.

All of us on the STEM Outreach team created science activities to teach the visitors on the ‘science station tables’. The Artist had then created a giant wicker sculpture representing the human body. The aim was to inspire the visitors to do some art to add to the sculpture by teaching them some science and then letting them get creative!

My fellow nutrition student friend and I had set to work the weeks before thinking of an idea for a digestion/gut health table as we thought this would be a good topic! I made a digestion diagram with labels and descriptions of what happens in each organ. I then bought some play dough so I could represent the food changing at each step of the digestion process and make a visual representation to help people understand. I thought the play dough would also help engage the children and help them learn at least a small part of a complex process. My friend made a diagram and some paper bacteria in a lucky dip box for people to pick out and stick on the gut – some of which had gut related facts on. We also had a selection of healthy gut foods to tell people about.

This was my big diagram (I also had a mini one with out the description paragraphs). I really enjoyed making it and getting to be a bit creative! I think visual aids can be very useful for science communication.

This was what our table looked like on the day!

The other science tables from fellow STEM Outreach Nottingham students included activities relating to DNA and blood.

During the day we chatted to the visitors and explained and taught them about our table of information. We started by talking to them about the process of digestion, about gut bacteria and healthy gut foods. Plus we then discussed many areas and different topics relating to this that came up in conversation.

In the quieter times we also got involved in the art which we really enjoyed! I did a lot more art and creative activities when I was at school and it is something I don’t prioritise any more but I should because I forget how relaxing it is. (I put this on the bowel section of the sculpture)

We had so many great discussions with people about digestion/the gut/bacteria/good gut foods.

I ran through the play dough food breakdown diagram lots of times – adjusting it depending who the visitors were and using different levels of science for different age groups/interest levels. As there were lots of children just explaining it to them more briefly and squishing the playing dough to represent chewing/food breakdown in the stomach etc and then having more detailed discussions with the adults.

We met so many people who were interested in nutrition and knew a fair amount already or who were keen to learn which was great!

One man told us about all the books he’d read and films he’d watched about food – though I was a bit worried some of the sounded like more shock factor than real nutrition.

A lovely older man told us about his pancreas enzymes tablet as his pancreas doesn’t work properly so takes one every time he eats.

Another man said he read book when 18 and is so so so interested in nutrition and has been since then!

For the children the most basic level was you eat and then you poo and anything they picked in between was something new to them.

So many people could relate to what we were telling them and brought up many stories of tummy problems /cutting out foods (I wouldn’t advice this without professional help from a registered nutritionist/dietitian)/ onion issues etc.

Overall I think we can conclude that everyone can relate to nutrition/health. (One of the reason I love studying it)

People are very interested which is great!

It was a great day and I’d definitely do it again.

This was the sculpture representing the human body with all the art work attached near the end of the day.

 

http://www.su.nottingham.ac.uk/societies/society/stemoutreach

http://www.thebigdraw.org/the-big-draw-2016-festival-theme

http://www.lakesidearts.org.uk

A week in the life of a Final year Nutrition student

Monday: 

Made porridge for breakfast and grabbed by lunch and snacks from the fridge/cupboard and prepared a flask of tea for the bus. (Trying to be as organised as possible helps cause i’m not a morning person!)

Two buses to uni then half an hour in the library to sort myself out! Printed off the lectures for the day and tried to organise my research to meet with my supervisor about my final year research project.

10-12 Changing behaviour, promoting health module. Today we were looking at ethics in health promotion. We had group discussion of some examples of Obesity advertising and looked at shock factor etc. Taking time to get our heads around the concepts as it’s not normal biological pathways science that we are used to! It’s very interesting though and I’m enjoying the real life links of nutrition.

1 30 Research project meeting with supervisor – My Initial research search showed I can’t do my initial title so need to broaden my search and refine it. I wanted to look at maternal diet and fat in particular but there isn’t enough studies so I will look at maternal obesity and/or gestational diabetes.

Careers fair – Wasn’t much relevant to nutrition specific jobs but Danone have a good graduate scheme which I’ve already started my application for. I spoke to some members of staff about more volunteering opportunities too.

Library – Writing up lectures and attempting to organise all the extra reading and start doing some… I brought snacks!

Yoga 6-7 30 – A bit more intense class than I expected but felt very stretched after.

Tuesday:

No lectures! (Most time off is the time allocated to our research project)

12 30-1 30 yoga – a calmer class this time.

Library – Researching for my dissertation and looking up studies to see how many there potentially is for my systematic review

6 – Meeting with STEM outreach. Science meets art! We are helping out at the big draw which is an event happening across the country. We are putting on science activites to go alongside art activites. This was our initial meeting to put forward ideas and find out the details about what we will be doing. The exhibition at the gallery is about the gut so me and my nutrition pal are thinking of doing an activity based on digestion. We fancy making a big diagram and getting the visitors to follow the journey of their food with interactive parts to learn what happens.

Wednesday:

No lectures again! Library again! Searching for studies for my research project and writing up lectures.

2 pm – Blog soc – meeting lovely people and learning about using social media to promote your blog. Especially with all the false nutrition claims and ‘health/fitness/wellness’ blogs around I think blogging and sharing information with the general public is so important for qualified nutritionists and dietitians!

Thursday:

Took my oats and yoghurt on the bus for breakfast as I had no time!

9-11 Molecular nutrition module. We were learning about gene organisation and structure.

Library – More searching for studies and then writing up lecture notes.

4-5 yoga – a good stretch on my way home.

Friday:

Headed to the library first thing after a bowl of porridge and flask of tea in hand to go over my CV and look at a job application.

11-1 Nutrition and health of populations module. We were looking at nutritional epidemiology. Nutritional epidemiology aims to describe disease patterns and prevalence, understand why some diseases are more common and which populations this occurs in and provide information to plan public health nutrition services. The general aim is to link exposure and outcome. We learnt about study designs to assess diet and disease.

1-5 coordinated physiological functions module. Today was exercise physiology labs again. (See previous blog post for more details!)

 

Exercise Physiology – Final year optional module for my nutrition degree

This term I am taking a module called coordinated physiological functions. It is actually based in the department of animal science so there is a variety of students on the module.

We will be looking at a variety of connected functions and behaviours and be focusing on the role of the hypothalamus and inter-connections with the nervous and endocrine systems. This is a key link between physiological function and behaviour.

‘The neural circuitry has a key role in providing central drive to the physiological changes underlying physical exercise. Increased activity has to be matched by alterations in cardiovascular and respiratory effort to meet the increase in metabolic demand.’ This is the description on our module handbook and introduces the area that we are currently looking at in our lab sessions.

In our labs we are comparing exercise economy according to predicted VO2max. We will look at the null hypothesis: fitness doesn’t predict exercise economy.

Exercise economy the energy cost of exercise at a particular work rate. Exercise economy can predict performance in aerobic events.

VO2max is oxygen consumption at maximal work rate. Fitness is characterised by VO2 max.

So basically we are going to see if fitness levels link to performance levels in the way we would expect. Using ourselves as subjects!

This is the equipment we will be using linked up to a computer.

We initially walked for a mile timed it and measured our heart rate after and then ran for a mile and timed it. We used these numbers and our weight and height to estimate our VO2max using an equation. We also predicted it using another equation based on non exercise data – using an exercise questionnaire and our BMI.

The next task is to predict our VO2max at sub-maximal work. So we will use the bikes to exercise to 75% of our VO2max and find the workload for each induvidual. Then we will use this to reate 4 workloads and then exercise for 3 minutes at each workload and record O2 consumption, heart rate and respiratory exchange ratio in order to predict VO2max.

Finally we will determine exercise economy by exercising for a short duration and measuring oxygen volume consumed. Subjects that consume less oxygen will be consumed by subjects that perform better.

Once we do all this we have to write up a group report of the findings.

Just shows how varied studying nutrition is!

Trying on the mask before I was linked up to the breathing equipment! It has to be completely tight so that all gas exchanged can be measured through the tube the mask is attached to.

 

What I get asked as a nutrition student… (no real nutrition)

Being a Nutrition student at University I get asked many questions from other students mainly housemates and friends etc …

Is my chicken cooked? (Don’t you just love getting chicken put near your face)

Has this milk gone off? (Off milk up your nose in the morning is lovely)

Can I eat this?

Is this cooked?

Can I cook this from frozen?

How do you boil an egg?

Does this smell funny? (raw chicken is even nicer to smell)

I have chicken and bacon – how do I make chicken wrapped in bacon?

What can I eat to clear my skin?

What is an avocado?

Is this a good portion size? (after three years I still very rarely cook the right amount of pasta)

‘Will my sangria be okay that I’ve left in the fridge uncovered for two days?’

What’s the best way to chop veg?

Is gluten bad for you?

How long do I cook this for I’ve lost the information from the packet?

What’s good food to reduce cellulite?

Will this make me bloated?

How can I get a flat tummy?

What herbs go with what?

How do I wash leeks?

What are you eating?

 

Luckily I know how to cook! and have an interest in food and health. It will take a while longer for people to understand we don’t get taught these things in lectures but actually more along the lines of human biology and complex biochemical interactions.

 

Ps. You are all great and can ask me all these questions forever