Newcastle University

Food Quality and Health

The research in this group aims to understand and optimise how diets, foods and food components affect human health, including how this can be affected by an individual’s genotype. The topics include diet composition, functional foods, food supplements and medicinal plants used by consumers, and provision of evidence to support health claims. The research comprises laboratory experiments (tissue culture, in vitro assays, animal studies) and human intervention trials.

It also includes research to understand and optimise how production methods affect the sensory and nutritional quality of foods, food supplements and herbal medicines. This includes primary production (agriculture), processing, storage, quality control/standardisation, safety assurance, cooking etc. This research involves laboratory analyses and tests as well as human studies, including sensory testing and/or questionnaire based surveys.

Much (but not all) of our work is linked to the Human Nutrition Research Centre or the Medicinal Plants Research Group.

The Human Nutrition Research Centre is a cross faculty collaboration with the Faculty of Medical Sciences to undertake research on the links between nutrition and health. Much of this research is multi-disciplinary and in many cases takes a life-course approach. This ranges from basic and cellular mechanisms to the development of dietary interventions for maintenance of health and wellbeing which could reduce the risk of common non-communicable diseases and so improve public health.

The Medicinal Plant Research Group organises cross-disciplinary collaborations exploring a wide range of activities including discovery of new plant-based bioactive compounds, modes of action and development of new therapies. These include neurosciences, dermatology, psychology, clinical brain ageing, oncology, diabetes and ageing and health.

Staff

Dr Kirsten Brandt Senior Lecturer	Email: kirsten.brandt@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0) 191 222 5852
Dr Iain Brownlee Lecturer	Email: iain.brownlee@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +65 65500148
Karl Christensen Industry Development Manager	Email: karl.christensen@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0) 191 222 8853
Dr Thomas Hill Senior Lecturer	Email: tom.hill@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0) 191 222 5071
Dr Georg Lietz Senior Lecturer	Email: georg.lietz@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0) 191 222 6893
Dr Edward Okello Executive Director of the Medicinal Plant Research Group	Email: edward.okello@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0) 191 222 5175
Professor Chris Seal Prof of Food & Human Nutrition	Email: chris.seal@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0) 191 222 7650

New Projects

MADOC - Collection and Meta-Analysis of Data on composition of Organic and Conventional foods
Project Leader: Professor Chris Seal

Fruit at Work Study
Project Leaders: Dr Amelia Lake, Dr Kirsten Brandt

The VegBP study: Effects of increased consumption of leaf and stalk vegetables and beetroot on cardiovascular function.
Project Leaders:  Professor Chris Seal, Dr Kirsten Brandt

• Better Organic Bread
  Project Leader(s): Carlo Leifert, Chris Seal
• Biomarkers of whole-grain intake
  Project Leader(s): Chris Seal, Kirsten Brandt
• Food-FRENZ
  Project Leader(s): Kirsten Brandt
• Grain Mark Study: Investigating Biomarkers of Whole Grain Intake
  Project Leader(s): Dr Chris Seal, Dr Sumanto Halder
  Grain Mark Study: Investigating Biomarkers of Whole Grain Intake
• Impact of diet on health and the effects of attitudes and behaviours on food choice and eating habits
  Project Leader(s): Chris Seal
• North East Food and Drink CIC
  Project Leader(s): Karl Christensen
• Plant phytochemicals and neurophysiological effects
  Project Leader(s): Ed Okello
• Studies on the beneficial effects of consuming whole grain foods, the WHOLEheart Study
  Project Leader(s): Chris Seal, Sharron Kuznesof