Healthy Food Design

AIM OF THE COURSE

The course focus on the challenge to turn nutritional science and functional ingredients into practical, market-ready ingredients and food products. It teaches how to meet regulatory standards and adapt to changing consumer needs. The course uses teamwork and learning from experienced professionals, giving participants both theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience. A key part is rapid conceptualization and prototyping, where ideas are quickly turned into testable products. It also covers the basics of starting a business, showing how to develop scientific ideas into real products. Participants learn how to bring their innovations to the attention of venture capital funds to scale up their initial ideas.  By including input from industry experts, the course balances academic learning with real-world business needs. The goal is to learn how to work effectively in both research and industry to create healthier food solutions.

COURSE CONTENTS & TOPICS

Through lectures and tutored group activities, the participants will learn which are the most pressing nutritional and public health needs that could be addressed by healthy food products/ingredients and which are the food design possibilities to answer these needs.

Young entrepreneur experience will be used to highlight the possibilities available for researchers who dream to translate innovation of healthy food design into a successful company. Academic experts will guide a process to experience how this can be achieved from the technical and marketing perspective. The academia and corporate perspectives on this startup environment and how this is changing the food technology research landscape will be discussed

PARTICIPANTS

The course is aimed at PhD candidates, postdoctoral researcher, professionals both academy and industry, that are interested in knowing how to design healthy foods for specific categories of consumers. The attendants should have basic knowledge of food science and nutrition. An MSc level in food science, human nutrition or a relevant working experience in the food system field, is requested.