Daily wrap-up: EFFoST2020 Day 2

November 12, 2020

The second day of EFFoST2020 was a full and productive day with scientific programme sessions from accepted abstracts and special sessions from projects and associations. To close the day, the EFFoST Working Group on Sustainable Food held a panel discussion.

With six parallel tracks, one of the first sessions of the day was dedicated to the valorization of side streams, with three EU projects discussing their common goal: to find new ways to use side streams. Namely, INGREEN is aiming to produce functional ingredients from paper and agro-food by-products, AQUABIOPROFIT will develop high-quality proteins and bioactives from European aquaculture, fisheries and agriculture side streams. This special session

 

was concluded by the EIT Food project "HPHC - Development and application of hydrocolloids functionalized by dynamic high pressure" that focused on improving the functionality of selected hydrocolloids.

During the short break, the delegates had the opportunity to visit the online poster sessions in individual poster rooms hosted by each poster presenter that facilitated interactive discussions.

The next batch of sessions covered a broad scientific spectrum, including Antony Fardet from INRAE, France. He talked about the optimization of the health potential of fruit-based products during the session “Digitalization for a smarter food sector”. He emphasized that “new non-thermal treatments such as high pressure or pulsed magnetic fields could have advantages over more traditional thermal treatments which can notably lead to loss of vitamins.” During the same session Dr Jerome Diaz, a senior scientist from Wageningen Food & Biobased Research talked about the potential of a combinatorial approach to fermentation that allows the systematic exploration and discovery for new and innovative fermented products.

The next session on ‘Microbes in the food sector’ gave interesting insights, with Mahide Muge Yilmaz from the University of Reading, UK sharing her findings that in the production of sausages, the use of protective cultures helps to inhibit unwanted micro-organisms and also helps to create an even better product.

After the lunch break, there was a session dedicated to “Omics in food research”. Here, Ermolaos Ververis, Scientific Officer of EFSA European Food Safety Authority presented how the safety assessment of “Novel Foods” by EFSA contributes to the resilience, diversity and safety of the food chain by providing scientific advice before potential EU market introduction.


IUFoST- the International Union of Food Science and Technology hosted a session on “What can Food Science do to Mitigate Obesity?" as processed foods, particularly calorie-dense foods, are regularly implicated as important drivers of obesity trends. In their second session of the day on ‘Food System Transformation and the Evolving Role of Food Science’, Prof. Ian Noble stated that the future of food will need to be more multi-functional, collaborative and holistic to secure our food system.

 

After the short break and poster sessions, the last parallel sessions of the days took place covering subjects such as food processing, food safety and regulations, food research and many more sub-subjects.


The second day of the conference closed with an interesting panel discussion hosted by the EFFoST working group on Sustainable Food. They had a fruitful dialogue sharing different views on the topic “Does Green equal Sustainable?”. Here is what the panellists said:

 
  • Anet Rezek Jambrak, Uni Zagreb, Croatia: ‘We can lower carbon footprint when using traditional food processing technologies with the aim of having lower energy consumption.’
  • Sergiy Smetana, DIL, Germany: "Guidance on where to set priorities for sustainable food systems could come from combining environmental impact reduction and right nutritional balance."
  • Hugo de Vries, INRAE, France: "In our EFFoST domain we should consider another way of consumption and production leaving the drive to produce more and more behind; instead we should focus more on what is our right to utilize."
  • Henry Jäger, BOKU, Austria: "We need to compromise to co-exist with nature"

We look forward to welcoming you at the third and final day of EFFoST2020 online conference!

Don’t forget that you can still watch all the presentations on-demand for one month after the end of the live conference. For more information and to register, go to the EFFoST conference website.

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