The 5-year HEALTHGRAIN project of the European Union has, in addition to the scientific research and development of technology, created an active network of stakeholders interested in making healthier cereal foods as part of the everyday life of consumers. The HEALTHGRAIN Forum will continue the activities and work of the HEALTHGRAIN project which will have its final meeting on 5-7 May, 2010 in Sweden.
The HEALTHGRAIN Forum will be the future platform to support the work for healthy cereals in the European diet. The aim is to continue the HEALTHGRAIN network to disseminate the many results arising from the work already done, and further to stimulate new research, facilitate international cooperation and bring together national research activities.
The mission of the forum is to promote science-based concepts fully unlocking the health promoting potential in the entire grain food production chain to obtain healthy, convenient and appealing foods. The vision of the Forum is that grain-based foods assist consumers in health maintenance worldwide, help reduce health care costs and provide added value for companies in the production chain.
The new Forum will continue knowledge and technology sharing between academia, industry and public bodies. It will stimulate and initiate research facilitating the development, processing and marketing of healthy cereal foods, including new research projects, continuing and expanding the scientific themes of the HEALTHGRAIN project. It will exploit and expand the expertise created in the project in order to increase the awareness, availability and acceptability of healthy cereal foods by actively communicating about cereal grain-based products and health and using advanced web-based communication tools. It will also be a platform for the creation of a broader grain alliance for better health.
The activities of the Forum will be divided into communication and networking activities of the stakeholders, and on defining and implementing the strategic research agenda to pull together European research themes and ideas. As a first deliverable the Forum has launched a new consumer and professionals targeted web page (http://www.cerealsandhealth.com/).
The HEALTHGRAIN Forum will be established during the HEALTHGRAIN Conference on May 5-7 in Lund, Sweden with over 30 founding members both from academia and industry. The Forum is open for all actors interested in contributing to the mission and vision, thus also thinking that the forum will assist them in their own work.
Further information:
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Academy Professor Kaisa Poutanen
Tel. +358 20 722 5192, kaisa.poutanen@vtt.fi
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Pekka Lehtinen, Senior Research Scientist
Tel. +358 20 722 7154, Pekka.Lehtinen@vtt.fi
Jan Willem van der Kamp, TNO, The Netherlands
Tel. +31 30 694 49 00, jan-willem.vanderkamp@tno.nl
http://www.cerealsandhealth.com