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Research
Each of the collaborating centres of IUNA has its own active
nutrition research programme. Where appropriate, collaborative
research programmes are established. The following projects are
illustrative of this collaborative research:
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- Applied Nutrition and Food Safety Research
The Institute of European Food Studies (IEFS http://www.iefs.org/).
IEFS was established in 1995 under the auspices of IUNA to conduct
research on a pan EU basis in three areas: Consumer attitudes to food,
nutrition and health, food chemical exposure estimates and nutrition
policy. IEFS is currently leading an EU 5th framework multi-centre
research programme on stochastic modelling of food chemical intake
(www.iefs.org/montecarlo).
IEFS is also a participant in another EU funded project which will
ascertain the attitudes of older citizens to food nutrition and health
in a pan-EU survey. This is part of a research cluster which is being
led by UCC with the acronym "Food Sense" which will examine sensory
and other factors influencing food choice in the
elderly (http://healthsense.ucc.ie/).
The North-South Ireland Food Consumption Survey
In 1996, a food consumption survey was initiated by IUNA with funding
from the Department of Agriculture Food and Rural Development, The Food
Safety Authority of Ireland, The Northern Ireland Centre for Diet and Health
and the food industry.
The survey involved a random sample of 1379 adults on the entire island
of Ireland. 958 adults were surveyed in the Republic of Ireland (South) and
421 were surveyed in Northern Ireland (North). The survey was completed
in 2000. A Summary Report on Food and Nutrient Intakes, Anthropometry,
Attitudinal data and Physical Activity patterns is now available.
This Summary Report was published and launched on the 13th of March 2001,
with the support of the Food Safety Promotion Board. This report is also
available on this website.
The Main Report, which provides more comprehensive details of the
results and also provides details of the sampling, recruitment and
methodology used to carry out the survey, will be also be available on this website
in the forthcoming weeks. The results of further analysis of this survey
will also be published as a supplement to Public Health Nutrition, a journal
of The Nutrition Society (http://www.nutsoc.org.uk/).
Over the next three years, IUNA will engage in a more detailed analysis of
the database in several areas of public health nutrition research and in the area of
probabilistic analysis for food safety purposes.
- Metabolic and molecular nutrition research
IUNA were responsible for the nutrition component of an EU funded
research programme on the use of micro-encapsulsted n-3 polyunsaturated
fatty acids for incorporation into dried food ingredients. This involved
a dose response study of the effects of low doses of n-3 PUFA on postprandial
lipid metabolism, LDL oxidation and growth factor function. Two of the
IUNA centres are now collaborating in a research programme on the effects
of conjugated linoleic acid on the immune and inflammatory systems and on bone metabolism.
'FOODCUE was an EC funded research project (FOODCUE -CT95-0813) involving 8
collaborating research centres (of which two, including the co-ordinator, were IUNA).
The aim of the project was to provide information on the precise requirements for
dietary copper and elucidate the balanced interactions which occur within
the whole diet with respect to copper. It included human supplementation
trials together with in vivo and in vitro studies on copper bioavailability
and copper absorption and in vivo dietary manipulation studies.
Joint research projects involving two partners in IUNA on optimal folate
status are funded by the Food Standards Agency, the EU and industry. These
studies are focused on the bioavailability of folates from natural food
sources; establishing the levels of intake of folate and metabolically
related B vitamins which are required to optimise status; the interplay
between genetic and nutritional determinants of homocysteine; and more
recently, the exploration of DNA replicative biomarkers in order to examine
the mechanistic relationship between folate status and relicative capacity
in colon cells from patients with/without cancer of the colon.'
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