Eat Well For Life

For the last 50 years advice about reducing the risk of developing heart disease has centred around reducing saturated fat intake. This is based on the premise that diets rich in saturated fat increase cholesterol which is a major risk factor for heart attacks. However, over the last few years several stories have been picked up by the media suggesting that this is not true, and nutritionists have been misleading the public! In my talk I will be exploring the origins of these stories and the question of whether we really got it wrong and if the time has come to change public health policy.

I currently work as a lecturer in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Nottingham. My research interests focus on the influence of nutrition on processes of development and in the susceptibility of tissues to injury. I initially became interested in the role of nutrition on development during my PhD which I conducted in Southampton. I then moved to research positions in London at the Institute of Child Health and subsequently the William Harvey Research Institute where I further explored the mechanistic aspects. I have continued to pursue this work here at Nottingham.

Food allergy is characterised as an immune response to food proteins which affects 8% of young children and 2% of adults. In this lecture, we will discuss some of the mechanisms behind food allergy and mention some advancement in food allergy diagnostics and its potential application in therapeutic development. Samuel is a PhD student at the School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, supervised by Dr Marcos Alcocer (department of Food Sciences). The main topic of his PhD is involved in the development of a comprehensive allergy diagnostic chip for respiratory diseases in horses.