INFOGEST - Improving health properties of food by sharing our knowledge on the digestive process

The Science Policy Briefing N°36 jointly published by ESF and COST in March 2009 clearly stated that the links between food and human health was a top research priority for Europe. EU legislation, as advised by EFSA, now demands proper scientific data in nutrition and health claims. There is a lot of data being generated on the link between the food digestion and human health and a significant effort continues to be expended separately in each EU country on optimizing food for preventing the development of food-related diseases. This COST Action will gradually build a European network that will spread and improve current basic knowledge on food digestion and promote harmonization of currently used digestion models used including validation with human data from different populations such as infants, elderly, sport professionals etc. A multidisciplinaryscientific community will be built on this topic gathering scientists from different disciplines (food science, nutrition, physiology, immunology, cell biology…). The Action will facilitate the transfer of new scientific advances to European food companies (large groups as well as SMEs) for developing new functional foods and reinforcing their competitiveness in a growing world market.