€6m EU project seeks satiety answers to EFSA’s health claim riddles
The SATIN project, as it is known, even has two members from a sub-committee of the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) health claims panel onboard to advise it.
The project is being led by the University of Liverpool ‘s Professor Jason Halford, PhD, who told NutraIngredients SATIN was the first project of its kind to be both science and end-product focused.
It is for this reason the commercial partners have added €2m to the €6m EU funding.
“Intelligent combinations of ingredients”
“That is why we are focusing on satiety diets rather than particular ingredients,” Dr Halford, from the Human Ingestive Behaviour laboratory at Liverpool University, said. “We are looking at intelligent combinations of ingredients.”
“We have anticipated EFSA requirements and are building those into the studies we are constructing. In a way this is beautifully timed coming as it does as EFSA has just published guidelines about weight management health claim submissions.”
Ingredients that are being examined include, “the typical suspects” like proteins, fibres, protease inhibitors and novel lipids.
“We are using food chemistry to alter food structure to deliver the right ingredients to the right place – the gastrointestinal tract – at the right time.”
The project runs in two phases:
- Phase 1. Establish new metrics for performance measurement. Will run until 2015.
- Phase 2. Take ingredient combinations into gold standard trials. 2015-2016.
Educating EFSA
Dr Halford said the project had a supplementary goal to, “educate EFSA about satiety science” as the EFSA guidance had been clearer about weight loss than the idea of satiety.
Initially SATIN will focus on in vitro modelling, which will be used to inform human clinical trials. Animal models will not feature due to their lack of importance with EFSA.
Halford added in a statement: “Obese and overweight people are less likely to feel full after eating, partly because of the energy-dense foods they prefer have a reduced impact on gastrointestinal hormone signals that help promote feelings of satisfaction and fullness.”
“SATIN aims to draw upon our improved understanding of appetite expression - how the foods we eat affect eating behaviour and appetite. If we can produce foods that fill people up quicker and for longer and taste good then we can help moderate appetite whilst maintaining a healthy balanced diet.”
Advisory board partners are the Beneo Group, Kraft Foods, Kellogg’s, Kemin Health, Fonterra, GlaxoSmithKline and Sensus.
