Symposium – Food

On Monday the 18th of June, the postponed symposium on food took place with three speakers covering the broad subject. Dr. Laura Meulenbroek from Danone opened the evening with a talk about cow’s milk allergy management. This talk revealed how the general opinion of exposure at a young age shifted from avoidance to stimulating tolerance. An interesting insight since the occurrence of food allergies has been increasing fast in the last few decennia.

Next up was Sandra Beijer from the IKNL, also known as the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation. She spoke about nutrition and its connection to cancer. Moreover, she compared the health effect of the consumption of popular new “healthy” food such as superfoods with that of simply eating less meat and more fruits and vegetables. Her very interactive approach reminded us all of our daily habits and the effects these might have on our health.

After these two talks, we had a (semi) healthy dinner of stir-fried noodles or rice.  Following the dinner, our final speaker was dr. Andrei Petukhov from Utrecht University. With a background in physics and chemistry, he came with a wildly different perspective on food. A wide range of everyday examples of food science such as the molecules our diet should consist of, what gives chocolate its shine and why we can’t as easily make a healthier mayonnaise filled the interactive talk on the physics of food.

From: https://www.wkof.nl/nl/kanker-voorkomen/verklein-de-kans-op-kanker/hoe-verklein-ik-mijn-kans-op-kanker and http://www.eoht.info/page/Human+molecular+formula, accessed on 09/07/2018